


waterfalls (i'm jumping down)

by grey_0_green



Series: running water [1]
Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Infidelity, M/M, There isn't, also a gift to myself, don't let that make you think there's porn though, fluff is for pussies lbr, for those of u who are part of the very small yut/sing corner this is my gift to u, i need more singxyut content, i'm sorry but really who didn't expect it, i'm sorry i just tell it like it is, it's gonna get angsty from here on out boys, some subtle ash/eiji, the answer is no, would we even be here if we couldn't handle a bit of angst, yut lung is a bottom, yut lung is an alcoholic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 17:07:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15953768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey_0_green/pseuds/grey_0_green
Summary: They are young, but one is jaded and one is full of fire.





	1. easily won, weary of losing

**Author's Note:**

> alright guys - welcome to my crib, which mostly consists of my favorite boys yut and sing. it's mostly canonical, but i played around with emotions and perspectives a bit. the last few chapters (which are not written yet) will be my own headcanons. i needed yut x sing content (more than just the, like. one fic that's been posted (which is good check it out!! it's [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15995849)) so i decided to make some myself. anyway enjoy
> 
> also these are all actual scenes in the manga and the list of them is here (sorry i'm not sure how to specify where exactly in the volumes they are but here you go)  
> \- volume six  
> \- volume seven  
> \- volume nine  
> \- volume ten
> 
> also the title is from the song 'i'm a firefighter' by cigarettes after sex
> 
> DISCLAIMER: this chapter is literal garbage but i promise you it gets better i'm so sorry please forgive me

He’s arrogant. The way he carries himself. The way he says Sing’s name, like he owns him.

He’s part of the Lee clan. So maybe he does.

His voice is like velvet, smooth and rolling and it lulls you, lulls you into a trance until you forget what he’s saying and you’re limp in his arms. He makes it seem like his words are gospel, and don’t you dare forget the sound of his voice because the needle he carries will ensure it’s the last thing you do.

He oozes wealth and power, grace and beauty, but Sing isn’t afraid of him, he can’t be, he _won’t_ be.

He asks Sing to join him. He doesn’t want to, not at all, he doesn’t trust him, not with his life, not with _anything_ , but what choice does he have?

He’s angry. He called Sing spirited, but he’s not spirited, he’s just angry over the things that he _should_ be angry about.

His face is an unwavering mask of carefully constructed features that remain blank. He smiles sometimes, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and it chills him, because when it does his face is one that induces a shot of pure terror.

Sing can’t figure him out. He is being charitable to him, but he exudes greed. Selfishness. Anger. Envy.

He’s grateful, of course - he won’t look a gift horse in the mouth - but there is no trust between them. He wants something, probably, but he supposes he’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.

The blades of the helicopter spin fast, whipping through the air. Sing avoids meeting his gaze and stares at the twinkling lights of the city below.

→ ←

He’s smarter than he looks. His face is innocent, naïve, hardened by his time sleeping on the streets and playing leader to Shorter’s old gang. It’s strange, he thinks, because for someone so young, he still commands a surprising amount of respect among them. Perhaps he’s underestimated him.

But then again, he’d seen legions of people underestimate Ash Lynx, and that had gotten them nowhere far.

He has the mind of an analyst, and Yut Lung can admire him for that. He’s surprised at how quickly he figures out that Ash is behind this - it’s clear to him, obviously, but he hadn’t expected anyone else to realise so quickly, especially not this boy.

It’s because he killed Shorter, he says, and Yut Lung is rather inclined to agree… if only he knew why. Probably, he replies, and he forces his features to betray nothing. He demands that he tell him what happened. Why did Ash kill Shorter? They were friends...

The knowledge is a burden. It’s crushing, and Yut Lung feels like he is suffocating underneath the weight of it. This boy - he may not be stupid, but he knows nothing about the world and how it’s tainted black. He is young, and full of life, so unlike himself, and he yearns to have that innocence again - and yet there is no resentment towards him. Only a desire to preserve his naïvety, shield him from the true horrors of the world.

So he doesn’t tell him. He only offers the same cryptic line he always does: Ash didn’t kill Shorter. He freed him.

It’s true, and it’s all he needs to know.

He has a sharp tongue, he finds. He’s angry, and Yut Lung understands. He would be too, in his position, but knowing what he knows he finds that it is much better for him to remain in the dark.

There is fire in his eyes, leaping and dancing, an inferno that threatens to _burn_ and for a moment he feels something that isn’t sadness or envy or regret or a sick, twisted glee.

But the sadness washes over him again, takes him over and forces him to put his swirling thoughts into words, and now he’s telling him why, telling him that he can’t know because living with this is like being thrown into the depths of Hell herself. Telling him that he doesn’t want him to become like them. Him and Ash. They are scarred, damaged. He doesn’t want another like them.

The fire in his eyes is extinguished further with every word that comes out of his mouth, his features morphing into something that is akin to fear after shock passes suddenly, quickly and he knows how it must sound.

Like it’s the end of the world. Like he’s a liar.

But it’s not a lie. Nothing he says is a lie. But maybe it sounds like one because his world ended a long time ago.

He believes him. It’s a relief, because nothing would be more painful than watching this boy’s innocence perish at _his_ hand.

“You and Ash kinda remind me of each other,” he says, and Yut Lung is almost shocked at his perception. He is right, in a way, but part of him refuses to believe it.

There is only one difference between him and Ash.

And perhaps that, that one difference, is the sole reason hatred, spite and anger run through his veins at the mere thought of him. Ash, who he is so like, yet so different from. Who has one thing that he will never have.

This boy’s loyalty is astounding. Shorter is dead, at the hands of no one but a drug gone awry, and he is still determined to fight him. Despite knowing that he won’t come out victorious. Despite the fact that there is no Shorter to fight for anymore.

He leaves as his brother arrives. He can’t blame him, really.

He watches, out of the corner of his eye, as his brother and his bodyguards come out of the elevator and he is forced to confront them.

His face is hard, set. Defiant.

Hm. Impressive.

His voice quivers when he responds. It’s not his fault, really. He’s seen people older, wiser than this boy tremble at the mere sight of his brother. Or, more accurately, the power that he has. Cross him, and you’re dead. And yet.

He is respectful, for the most part, looking down and avoiding making direct eye contact with someone who is leagues above a lowly street rat.

There are chinks in his armor, and they show when his brother mentions Shorter. The way he talks about him. Like a stain. An annoyance, now removed.

He is not overtly angry. He contains himself. Rather well, for someone who is so dedicated to Shorter. Impressive again.

His brother and his bodyguards brush past him, and Yut Lung can see him visibly deflate.

He leaves, and Yut Lung is left alone to deal with his brother.

So he does.

→ ←

Sing is called out of the cell he shares by a policeman with blond hair. He doesn’t want to leave his boys, but what choice does he have? He’s led outside with an angry glare - there’s another policeman there, with sunglasses and a handlebar mustache. He’s calling out a name, _Eiji Okumura_ \- It sounds vaguely familiar, and then an Asian boy is walking out. He was there - at the very end, when Ash was falling, he remembers.

English isn’t his first language, that much is clear. He says he's Japanese, and… a friend of Ash’s.

Sing knows a lot of things, and one of them is that Ash Lynx does not have friends. He has comrades and followers, people that fall at his feet and weep, but Ash Lynx does not have friends. Despite that, there is a boy here, who looks to have no ill intentions, claiming that he is friends with Ash Lynx. There's nothing on his face that suggests he isn’t being entirely truthful, nothing on his face other than innocence and fear.

When he's led outside, he's both surprised and somehow very nonplussed at the sight of a sleek black car and a voice that he would recognise anywhere floating out of it.

Behind him, men that are twice his size seize Eiji Okumura and drag him away.

He doesn’t understand. What’s so important about him? There's nothing about him that looks threatening or intimidating - in fact, Sing would peg him as quite the opposite. He’s really very unassuming - what could he possibly want with this boy?

He asks him. Of course, he doesn’t answer, but then again, Sing hadn't really been expecting him to. His face is blank, like a mask painted on.

He sits down, irritation simmering, and then Yut Lung tells him, “I told you not to get involved with Ash.”

His annoyance spikes. It’s none of his business, and he tells him so.

He tells him that his admiration for Ash is understandable.

He’s angry now. Part of him knows he’s right, but another part of him refuses to admit it.

He feels open, exposed. He doesn’t understand how he can read him so easily. Like an open book. It’s like he knows exactly what he’s thinking, exactly what he’s feeling. It’s… strangely terrifying.

He asks him about his boys. What’s going to happen to them? He is assured that they will be released, and the ball of tension in his stomach untangles a little.

When he walks inside the house, he tells his… butler… um, he isn’t too sure who he is, exactly, but he tells him to lock up Eiji. He doesn’t understand, but he senses that an explanation is not forthcoming, so he doesn’t bother questioning him about it.

And then the door opens, and he knows with absolute certainty that that is not Lee Hua Lung. But it is. Sort of.

It’s a hollow husk of what he once was. His eyes are blank, dead, and there is drool on his chin. He is stunned, and it is only the smooth, rolling tones of Yut Lung’s voice that make him snap back to the present. He looks at Yut Lung’s face, and what he sees scares him. Terrifies him, deep and chilling, because he knows by the unfeeling and emotionless look on his face that this is his doing. He did this.

He speaks to him like a child. Essentially, he realises, that’s what he is. Unable to function, barely able to walk, he falls forward onto Yut Lung.

He is shocked and a little bit horrified, and Yut Lung glances over at him. He asks him, a slight smile on his face, eyes dripping honey and false sympathy, “What is it, Sing?” Almost like he doesn’t know what it is. What he’s done.

“What did you _do_?” The question bursts out of him, unbridled, and then he is terrified because he realises suddenly that maybe he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

He seems to know this, too, and, of course, doesn’t give him a straight answer. He claims that he’s just ill, but he knows better. Illness doesn’t do this to someone. This is the complete erasure of his very being. This is big. Bigger than he knows.

Then he’s done it. He’s practically admitted he did this. He’s a puppet, he says. And he says it with such utter satisfaction that if he wasn’t certain before, he sure as hell would be now.

The words that come next are so unnerving and bone chilling that there is nothing he can do, he can’t breathe, can’t move, he is frozen in such utter fear that nothing, nothing could snap him out of the pure terror that runs like ice in his veins.

“What’s the matter, Sing?” He is torn between hatred and desire at the sound of his name rolling off of his tongue, smooth like whiskey, soft like butter. “I thought you _hated_ my brother,” he says, misinterpreting, whether purposefully or by simple mistake, the expression on his face as sympathy and horror at what has happened to Lee Hua Lung. It is, but it isn’t, really, it’s just horror at the thought that he did this, that someone with such power and prestige could be lowered to such a state. By the hands of Yut Lung.

It’s an awful mixture of fear and horror and the feeling of being so absolutely and completely wrong. He feels stretched taut, like a rubber band, like Yut Lung is holding the strings, like if he stretches just a _little bit more_ , he’ll snap.

“Oh--” he continues, “But that’s all right.”

“So do I.”

The laugh that comes after feels like cold water trickling down his back, and perhaps he would shiver if he could move, but he feels frozen, absolutely frozen.

It’s completely horrifying, because Yut Lung feels almost like fear personified.

→ ←

There’s a noise. Loud, like something breaking. Glass. It came from his room.

Another futile escape attempt, he’s assuming. He doesn’t know why he keeps trying.

Actually, that isn’t true. He knows exactly why - he just doesn’t understand.

What the…

It’s… empty.

He didn’t think he’d actually…

There are loud footsteps behind him, but it’s too late. He turns around and now Eiji Okumura has a knife pressed against his throat. He could die right now, and all he says is, despite being very afraid and more than a little startled at the brazenness of this boy, “...Did you know you’re bleeding?”

“If Ash finds out I made you bleed, he’ll probably - ” _kill me_ , he wants to say, but he doesn’t, partially because he knows Ash will kill him anyway, and partially because Eiji, who seems to have possessed much more fire than he had realised, interrupts him with a loud and vehement, “ _SHUT UP!_ ”

His bodyguards come rushing in, too late, and part of him is screaming that it isn’t, but maybe the part of him that wants it to be is stronger than the part of him that doesn’t.

He tells them to put their guns down. Hm. Interesting. So he vaguely knows how this is supposed to go.

He tells them to do as he says. When they do, reluctantly, Eiji picks up the gun, momentarily taking the knife away from his throat as he does so. It isn’t for long, but it’s enough for him to be able to turn around and reverse their positions.

He doesn't move.

He feels the cool metal of the barrel pressed against the back of his head. He'd missed his chance.

If only he could feel something other than wary acceptance when realises this.

He knows, as Eiji leads him towards the elevator, that there is a very small chance of Eiji actually hurting him, letting alone put a bullet in his head, but he pushes that fact to the back of his mind.

Eiji is angry, and his accented English comes out worse when it’s tainted with his fury. It’s a convenient excuse when he reassures his guards that it’s okay - he has an idea. It’s true enough, he supposes, but it’s likely not the type of idea that they have in mind.

The elevator doors slide open to reveal Sing. It’s exactly who he needs to see and it’s also the last person he wants to see.

Immediately he moves into a defensive stance, and then, shock passing over his features, he takes in the situation: Eiji Okumura, what seemed to be a rather harmless boy, leading him, Lee Yut Lung, who _did that to his own brother_ , with a gun to his head in front of unarmed guards out of the building.

He sees his hand fly towards his back pocket.

 _No_ , he pleads, silently, _Don’t_.

And then, they’re in the elevator, Sing outside of it, and the doors close, and the last thing Yut Lung sees before the doors seal shut is the panicked expression on his face.

→ ←

_Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck._

He needs to be quick. He runs, heart pounding and blood pumping, his only thoughts being that he _needs to get there before something happens to him_.

_Fuck!_

There’s a car pulling away. Fast. Too fast.

No. Not too fast. He spies a bike nearby and grabs it, hopping on and revving the engine before speeding after the car.

The scene he arrives at is puzzling, to say the least. Eiji is walking away. They both look unharmed. Why didn’t he just…

He doesn’t say anything yet. Yut Lung looks like he’s about to say something to the boy’s retreating figure. And he does.

“Eiji,” he says, face closed off, but defiant. Determined. “Let me just say one thing…”

Eiji turns around.

“If in fact this is some kind of deception… and if in fact Ash is still alive… then I will still be his enemy.”

Sing isn’t surprised, not really. But Eiji’s face fills with fear, not for himself, but… for _Ash_. And it’s in that moment that he comes to realise two things - the first being that Yut Lung, despite being shown this act of mercy, is very, very serious. The second being that despite his previous reservations, it’s clear that to this boy, Ash means a whole fucking lot. As more than a comrade or a follower. Maybe even as something more than a friend.

Yut Lung isn’t done.

“I came to that decision just now. I’m going to destroy him. You see, we are the positive and negative of the same photograph. We both began as helpless, abused children…”

Oh. He didn’t know. He’d guessed, of course. He hadn’t known for sure.

He feels horror seep into his bones.

“...who had to learn to kill well to survive. But the paths we chose were still… very, very different.”

Eiji’s face is hard, now, too. His eyes are icy. Cold.

“Ash will find me to be a formidable enemy. Certainly more so than Arthur, and perhaps… yes, perhaps even more so than Golzine.”

He’s confident. Were this anyone else, he would say probably too confident, but he knows him well enough by now that he will be an enemy unlike any he’s faced before, at the very least.

“Rather difficult to box your own shadow.”

It’s an interesting metaphor. Strangely accurate, when he thinks about it. It’s odd, though, that Yut Lung thinks of himself as Ash’s shadow.

“So I’ll tell you this straight out: as long as you remain Ash’s only weakness - ” And then everything clicks into place. Why he's so important. Ash cares about him. Really cares. “ - I’ll come after you again.”

Yut Lung stares at him. The air is vibrating with tension. It's like nothing he’s ever seen before, seeing two people that are so different clash in a mixture of anger and confusion, a mess of tangled emotions.

The knuckles that are clutched around the gun are white. Eiji lifts up the gun, steadily, face still stony.

“You had better do it, Eiji.”

It’s that, the very last statement that scares Sing just as much as seeing him speak to Hua Lung, because he knows that despite Eiji being close to Ash, he’s still very inexperienced. He can see it in the way he holds the gun, his stance, his posture, the look in his eyes. Everything is wrong. And he knows Yut Lung can see it, too.

And what scares him is that despite all this, despite his inexperience, despite knowing that he could easily overpower him, easily outmaneuver him, he does nothing. He stands there, open, waiting. Like he wants it.

He wants him to pull the trigger.

The thought is somehow more frightening than thinking about the damage he’s capable of inflicting.

He thinks that this is perhaps the moment that he realised that Yut Lung is probably the furthest thing from one dimensional that he could possibly think of. He is so complex, with so many layers woven in, out, in, out, that he thinks it would probably take years to untangle them. He wonders if he would be willing to spend years just figuring him out.

He knows the answer, but doesn’t acknowledge it.

“For Ash’s sake - ” Is it really for Ash’s sake, he wonders? Or is it really for yours? “Kill me.” There is a hint of pleading in his voice. Almost indiscernible.

He can’t do it. He isn’t surprised, really. Eiji has never struck him as a killer.

He’s goading him. “What’s the matter? He wouldn’t hesitate.”

God, he must really want this.

Every word he says hits its target. Eiji looks hurt, guilty, guilty for not killing a man who has sworn to kill Ash.

He’s guilting him, trying to push his buttons, and he is, he’s just, he’s just, he’s just pushing the wrong ones.

It’s provoking a reaction he didn’t anticipate. Eiji won’t kill him. He accuses him of taking Ash for granted. Of taking what he gives him as if it’s “what he deserved,” and questions, brutally, mercilessly, why he can’t even do him the comparably small favor of eliminating someone that has vowed to destroy him.

“That - that is _wrong_!” He’s breathing hard, he’s angry, he’s hit all of his nerves, and yet none of the ones he wanted to hit -

“Oh, really. How? Well, it’s certainly not _right_ , Eiji. In fact, it’s completely unfair. Why _you_ , anyway?” He sounds pissed. He sounds… almost jealous. It leaves Sing feeling unsettled, a feeling he doesn’t want to identify churning in his stomach.

“ _You_ cannot… understand.” His voice is venomous, dangerous.

“Someone like _you_ will _never understand_!” His voice is filled with fire, roaring and bursting out of him.

And then he’s gone.

→ ←

This isn’t what he had wanted.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go.

Maybe even he hadn’t even known how it was supposed to go.

But he hadn’t expected this.

He hadn’t expected, with all his goading and taunting and guilting that this - this pure, unmitigated destruction of all the defences he had built around him - this is the reaction he had provoked. All the walls he had put up to prevent his emotions from crashing in like a tidal wave, to prevent them from swallowing him whole, had crumbled.

And now, now he’s drowning.

“I got a question.”

Wonderful.

Fucking wonderful. He had witnessed the entire fucking thing, his cruelty, his shame and his downfall.

He had seen _everything_.

“He was wide open. You had a million chances to grab the gun.”

Everything.

“I’d like to be left alone, if you don’t mind.”

He tries, he really does, to keep his voice even. Controlled. It isn’t, though. It's cracked, frayed. Broken.

He sounds defeated.

“I ain’t asked my question yet,” he says, and Yut Lung is almost never afraid, but he is certainly very afraid right now.

“So - do you wanna die so bad…?”

There is something in his voice, something he can’t place, but the words that come out of his mouth are exactly the ones he is afraid of. Because this boy is far too perceptive for his own good.

He isn’t done, and Yut Lung isn’t quite sure he can take anymore of being ripped wide open, being so exposed that he can pick apart everything that holds him together.

“You were _serious_ just now. You weren’t just tryin’ to mess with him… you wanted him to - ”

It’s too much, he doesn’t want to listen to this, he can’t listen to this -

“Didn’t you hear me? _Leave me alone!_ ” His eyes are flashing, his blood is boiling. No one has ever gotten under his skin this way before.

Sing is silent for a moment, and tension crackles in the air.

“They said on the news that Ash died. That true?” The change of topic is unexpected, but not unwelcome. He sounds sad, resigned.

“Huh. What do you think?” He doesn’t believe it himself. After everything he had done, after all the times he _hadn’t_ died, he didn’t think he would go out this easily.

“I got no idea. But I thought you might know something…” He doesn’t, not really. He doesn’t know anything, not for sure, but he feels that he would _know if he had died._  

“I regret to say that clairvoyance is not among my powers, Sing.” He feels so exhausted. Burdened. “Now will you just leave?” He starts to walk away.

“...All right. Easy to say. Harder to do…” His words feel heavy, loaded with meaning. There is a silence, and then there are only the steady sounds of pounding footsteps behind him.

 


	2. weak and alluring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all this is _it_!! i'm super excited to be posting this i've been working on it for a few days now (finally got some motivation to sit down and get it done haha) so i'm glad i can finally put this out there. 
> 
> i'm a little shocked tbh like i love this pairing a lot but holy SHIT. literally every scene in this thing is canon (as i stated before, i'm messing around with emotions and perspectives) and it's... guys... if someone came out and told me akimi yoshida said that yut lung and sing were a thing i would not be surprised in the least. how is it not i'm
> 
> the scenes referenced here are in:  
> \- volume thirteen  
> \- volume fourteen  
> \- volume eighteen
> 
> i'm really glad i'm done with this part like i really enjoyed writing it but! it felt a bit like i was cheating so i'm looking forward to writing some of my own headcanons for this too!
> 
> the chapter titles are from the lovely lucy dacus' body to flame

“I want you to take me to see… Yau-Si,” Eiji says.

It’s not what he’s expecting, not what he expected to hear at all. After all, from what he’d seen, their last encounter hadn’t… hadn’t really gone over too well.

He asks him why, because, really, there aren’t too many reasons why someone like Eiji would want to see someone like Yut Lung.

“Ash is missing!” Eiji says, and Sing is startled again by the depth of emotion he sees on him. His voice is desperate, panicked, his eyes are wide and wild. “He went out two days ago, and nobody knows where he is!”

He pauses. Considers. He doesn’t like this. “...You sayin’ Yau-Si got something to do with it?”

“...Probably.”

He’s right. He knows he is. He has every reason to be behind this. A motive. Maybe even the means to do it.

But a part of him doesn’t want to believe it.

“Probably?” He says, because probably isn’t yes, and that means maybe he has nothing to do with this.

He is silent, they both are, and he doesn’t like this, not at all, but Eiji hasn’t done anything to him and the look on his face makes him want to agree.

So he does.

→ ←

Ringing, ringing. It fills his ears, and also his curiosity. Is it Dino Golzine?

No one he wants to see ever comes to see him.

After a few moments, one of his guards approaches him and says, “Sing-Soo Ling here to see you, Master Yau-Si.”

Oh! How… unexpected. He is never the one to come to him - it's always he who calls Sing to come and see him.

His skin tingles, and he tells his guard to send him in.

Carefully, he rearranges himself over the cushions, bare feet caressing the soft silk of the one farthest away from him, long, braided hair draped over his chest.

He feigns looking up from the magazine he hasn’t been reading as he hears him approach. “How very unusual, Sing… for you to come looking for me.”

His features seem sharp, the amusement that lines them harsher than usual. “I hate plush carpets,” he says, not addressing the unasked question in his statement, “Feel like quicksand.”

He steps aside, and then he sees Eiji Okumura emerge from behind him.

Oh.

He doesn’t like the feeling that comes over him, the one that is not sadness or regret but something else with a bitter, bitter twist.

This is the reason for his unprecedented visit.

He smooths his features. He doesn’t care.

“And I see you’ve brought with you a very unusual visitor.” His face, he knows, is tinged with something like anger and perhaps a cold, calculating amusement.

“Ash is missing,” Eiji says, and suddenly all he feels is very, very resigned.

Because yes, he is. He can’t even bring himself to look surprised, because he is missing, and it’s his fault, and if not entirely, than at least mostly. Even if he tells himself that it’s what he wanted, there is still something swirling inside of him that disagrees, something inside him that disagrees entirely.

He ignores it, because it’s the only thing he can do.

Avoiding his eyes, he hears him say, rather calmly, for someone whose feelings run so deep, “I think you know where he is - don’t you?”

He does.

He knows where he is.

But it’s too late. There’s nothing he can do but sit and watch him slowly be destroyed.

“Me? And why?” He hates playing this fruitless game, but he has done it so many times by now that even if this is something he no longer can muster the will to do, he can do it anyway. Just for appearance’s sake.

“You told me, before. You will be his enemy, and go after me. ...Someone tried to kill me the other day.” His cheeks begin to flush, his voice gets increasingly more heated. “After that, Ash was acting very strange - he left the house two days ago, and never came back. I think you know where he is!”

The fact that he put that all together is mildly surprising, and Yut Lung suddenly wonders if he has perhaps underestimated him. He is worth everything to Ash Lynx, but perhaps that's not the only reason he's worth something.

“Well, well. I thought that head of yours was just an empty box… but you aren’t completely stupid, after all.” He’s confessed, he realises, but of course, he’d known it would come to this as soon as Eiji Okumura stepped into the room.

“So you do know!”

Of course he knows. There’s no way Golzine could have thought of something like this on his own. Perhaps he doesn’t care for emotions, but he understands them, and he knows exactly how to exploit them.

“And so what if I do?” he challenges. “What are _you_ going to do if you find out? You can’t do anything - because you don’t have the guts!” His voice is loaded with contempt, and he’s sickened by the mere thought of this weak, naïve boy, who is supposed to be older than him but is instead reminiscent of a young, emotional teenager.

“ _What did you do to Ash?_ ” His voice is dangerous and promises retribution, but Yut Lung isn’t afraid at all, because what can he do? He is nothing, just a pawn he can use to have his way.

“If you’re so eager to know, I’ll tell you.” What’s the harm, anyway? There is nothing, nothing at all he can do to help him now. Ash Lynx is beyond help, and the knowledge that he is will only make Eiji Okumura suffer more.

“Ash has lost everything he had, for your sake. He did a deal with us, to save your life!” Eiji’s eyes widen, and the flush creeps higher on his cheeks. He is struck, suddenly, with the memory of Ash Lynx picking up an empty gun and pulling the trigger as the barrel was pressed against his own skull.

It’s foolish, so foolish, to care for someone so deeply.

But a part of him wonders if there was anyone, ever, who would have done the same for him.

He hates that he wonders, and he hates even more that the answer is undeniably and irrefutably no.

“Two months from now, _News Week_ magazine was going to publish a political scandal as its cover story. It was a scoop that reached to the heart of the administration. He handed over all the data on that story to us. For your sake!” He had been smug after Ash had handed over the files, but beneath it all, anger had burned, burned, _burned_ because this was all it took? The threat that some useless boy would be eliminated was enough to destroy the work that would rip apart the entire scandal, uncover secrets and lies, destroy _everything_ , and this was all it took?

“And that’s not all. Why do you think he hasn’t been back since then? He’s been taken prisoner by Dino Golzine. And all of that is _your_ fault!”

There’s a silence after that, when he is breathless and panting, and Eiji Okumura is red and a drop of sweat trickles down his face. There is something in his eyes that Yut Lung didn’t expect to see there, not guilt or a deep sorrow, but a hard glint to his eyes. He doesn’t understand what about this boy makes him so _goddamn angry_ but he thinks part of it is probably because he is just a little bit too smart to fall for his tricks.

“If it hadn’t been for you, Ash wouldn’t have had to lose anything. Golzine said he’d destroy him, little by little, until he goes out of his mind. I heard it with my own ears! Ash is in hell right now, and it’s all your fault!”

He’s lying, he’s lying, he knows he is, but that’s what he does, isn’t it?

Lies, lies, lies. Sometimes he can’t even tell the difference between when he’s telling the truth and when he’s telling a lie anymore.

“...Yet you aren’t going to do anything about it, are you?” Of course he isn’t. He can’t, no matter how much he may want to. “You _can’t_ do anything, anyway. So how about taking responsibility for it the Japanese way? I could help you out. I’ll chop your head off for you after you commit hara-kiri. - Not quite your style?” he says, after seeing the expression of pure disgust on his face. He knows that’s not why he looks like that, of course. He knows that expression is all for him.

“So jump out the window. Shall I open it for you?” He taunts him, he’s cruel, he knows, but nothing else is working. Nothing, nothing, _nothing_ and he _hates_ it.

“Is that all you wanted to say?” Eiji says, and he says it so calmly that he almost can’t believe it, why isn’t he guilty, why isn’t he _fucking reacting_ to _anything_ he says?

“Well, I don’t care what you say to me, Yau-Si,” he says, and that’s not his name, not really, and he _knows_ it isn’t, and the anger in his veins flows quicker, quicker.

“I’ve stopped thinking that way. Ash cares for me, just as much as I care for him… That’s all this means!” He radiates anger, and, for what is probably the first time in his life, pure danger.

“And I am going to rescue him, no matter what! I’ll do anything it takes - if I have to kill people to save him, I will!” He sounds so sure, so angry, so full of fire that in this moment he believes him. He believes him.

“So say whatever you want, asshole!” He’s yelling, so loud, and then he’s running out the door, and in the next moment, he’s gone.

He’s breathing hard, his face is flushed, and he pulls at his silk sleeves. They’re sticky with sweat.

“You lost,” he hears, and _fuck_ , he’d forgotten he was there.

Why is he always there in his lowest moments and never his best?

As if there are any moments at all that aren't his lowest.

His expression is light, gloating, but there is something darker behind it, and it is so infuriating, the proverbial cherry on top of the proverbial worst cake ever, that he hurls the nearest vase at his head.

“Woah - ! Are we a little hysterical?”

“ _Shut up!_ ” His voice sounds high and shrill even to his ears, so different from what he sounds like normally, and he sounds emotional and undignified, and he hates it, hates it, hates that anyone has to see him like this, hates that Sing has to see him like this, and now all he wants is for him to get out, get out get out.

“Master Yau-Si…” His bodyguard appears, just in time.

“Oh, just let him go. There’s nothing he can do, anyway!” Sing hadn’t even come to see him, anyway. This was all just for the Okumura boy.

“I ain’t too sure about that,” he says, and Yut Lung really doesn’t know if he can take much more of this.

“Quiet guys like him, when they snap they can be a real handful,” he says, and if that doesn’t make his blood boil he isn’t sure what does, because it takes all of his self restraint not to snap and say something like _No, really. I hadn’t fucking noticed._

“Watch it if you don’t want him messing up your game plan.” Well, he knows that, at least now he does.

“Sing! How dare you talk to young Master like that!” His bodyguard interjects, and for some reason this makes him feel even more angry than when Sing was speaking, because he can fight his own battles, which he knows is ridiculous because that’s exactly what he’d hired him to do.

“He ain’t _my_ master, dude. I told you before, I ain’t a flunky like you guys.” He wonders what it is about Sing-Soo Ling that manages to make him feel, feel strangely, like he admires him for refusing to be controlled, for the fire in his eyes, for just _being_.

“So hey, that was news to me,” he says, and then the swirling beneath his skin solidifies and settles, heavy like lead, tinged black like poison in his bloodstream.

“Since when have you teamed up with that old fart Golzine?” His voice is angry, accusing, and he hates that it is directed at him.

“Listen - I’ve got nothing against you, you’ve been cool with us so far. But what I just heard _ain’t_ cool, by a long shot!” His features twist, sharpen, and suddenly Yut-Lung feels trapped, head perched on the edge of a guillotine and Sing falling quickly, quickly, ready to kill.

“Golzine’s the one who was giving Arthur orders. And he’s the one who gave Shorter that drug. So if you say you’re gonna keep up this little partnership of yours - I might end up giving that Japanese kid some back up.”

Yut Lung wonders if this is what it feels like to have knives dragged across your skin and being unable to scream.

His expression clears, and he stuffs his hands in his pockets, walking breezily towards the door. “That’s all. See ya!” Sing says, and Yut Lung can only wish that it was a promise.

And then he’s alone.

→ ←

He’s ringing the buzzer.

“Yes?”

“Sing-Soo Ling here. Is young Master at home?”

He pauses, and for a moment there is deathly silence, and then there is a shadow creeping up behind him, grand and looming.

He turns around, and the man behind him is… _gargantuan_.

He’s a good two feet taller than him, and twice as wide, which wouldn’t be so bad if he was obese or something, but this man is made of pure muscle, and there is something in the back of his mind that whispers, _maybe don’t fuck with this guy_.

“Hello!” the man says, voice deep and rumbling. He is smiling, ever so slightly, and his face is open, but it’s strange, because it isn’t, really.

He feels a bit intimidated, but he doesn’t want him to think that he can just boss him around, so he cranes his neck (which, to be honest, really diminishes the effect he’s going for) and says, “Hey, dude!”

“Hm?” He looks surprised that he’s spoken at all.

“Step back a little, will ya? You’re blocking my light!” He’s not sure if this was the right thing to say, but it was the only thing that came to mind, but he’s beginning to realise that’s made him look a little pathetic, if anything.

“Oh! I beg your pardon,” he says, the picture of politeness, and steps to the side.

He feels distinctly uncomfortable. This man is surely something, he thinks. He’s a giant, practically, and yet.

And yet there wasn’t a sound at all as he approached - he went almost completely undetected until he was close enough to be stabbed.

Something isn’t right.

The door opens. “Sorry to have kept you waiting… Oh! Mister Blanca. I didn’t realise you were together. Please come in. Master Yut Lung is waiting for you.”

“Thank you. I believe he was expecting me,” the man, who is called Blanca, says.

Hm. Blanca. He doesn’t recognise the name, but he doubts it’s really his name, anyway.

And why is Yut Lung expecting him, anyway?

They are led into the main entryway, and just as he hears a, “This way, please,” there is a crash, a bang, and his guard is yelling, “Master Yau-Si!”

Blanca whirls around to face the staircase, and he follows suit, and he’s quick, but not that quick, and only barely notices that the dishevelled man on the staircase is facing them and holding a pistol in his right hand before Blanca steps in front of him and yells, “Get back! He’s armed!”

Suddenly Blanca is pulling a gun out of his coat before Sing can even blink, and the gun is shot out of his hand and Sing’s string is flying straight towards his neck. It wraps around, once, twice, and he grunts, and he’s ready, ready to pull and snap his neck, but Blanca shouts, “Don’t kill him!” and suddenly he’s brought back to his senses and slackens his grip.

When they get up the stairs, however, the body is limp and there is something dribbling out of his mouth.

“Too late. He’s dead. Looks like he had a poison capsule between his back teeth.”

Oh. “You mean he was…”

“A professional assassin.”

Shit.

Blanca is going somewhere, and Sing feels he has no choice but to follow.

There’s a man kneeling beside Yut Lung, and his voice is panicked, distraught. “Master Yut-Lung… Master Yau-Si! Are you alright? The doctor is on his way, sir!”

Oh, fuck. He’s bleeding. His shoulder is covered in blood and he’s trying to stop the blood flow with his hand but really, it’s not doing anything to help. His face is twisted in pain and suddenly he feels sick, which is strange because he’s never been squeamish at the sight of blood before.

Blanca bends down so that they are level, him and Yut Lung, and says, quietly, “Let me look at it.”

Yut Lung grunts in pain and pulls away a little.

“This was from point blank range,” Blanca says, “Was it someone you know?”

“My cook. I hired him a month ago.” It hits him, then, that someone has tried to _kill him_. Someone has tried to kill Yut Lung. The realisation makes his chest grow uncomfortably tight and he finds himself trying to regulate his breathing.

Blanca begins to peel off the clothing around his shoulder, and the deep river of crimson blood creates a stark contrast with the pale, untouched skin beside it.

“He had impeccable references - ” Yut Lung begins, but is cut off as a sharp groan of pain escapes him.

“I’m sorry this hurts,” Blanca says, “Let me just staunch the bleeding, all right?” He’s good at this, Sing notices, and he wonders where the hell he came from and who the hell he is.

“No broken bones, at any rate. You dodged it admirably.”

“I’ve been well-trained against assassination attempts.” He says it like he’s trying to be proud, but something inside of him makes it sound sad and resigned, instead.

“It seems he was a contract killer. We captured him, but he committed suicide.” Sing appreciates the use of “we” in his phrasing but he knows he didn’t do all that much - Blanca could have handled it without him, he’s sure. “Any ideas as to who wanted you dead?”

“Too many to know who it could be.” He doesn’t even try to conceal his emotions this time.

“Might be the Vietnamese,” he finally says. “Seems _somebody’s_ been spreading rumors that the reason his brothers all got rubbed out was the Vietnamese Triads were after their lucrative business empire. Thanks to which, us down at the bottom of the heap’re gettin’ dragged into a lotta rumbles lately that we could live _without_.” It’s true. Him and his gang have taken a few hits that they really couldn’t afford to take, lately.

Apparently this is the wrong thing to say, however, because Yut Lung turns his head so quickly he must have gotten whiplash and shouts, “Shut your mouth, Sing!”

It startles him, because even though this isn’t the first time this has happened, he’s never snapped at Sing without him expecting it.

He stands up from where he’s sitting, hair whipping and ripped clothes sliding further down his chest. “I don’t remember asking you to come here! I’m sick of your stupid, tasteless sarcasm! Now _get out_!” He’s screaming by the time he’s finished, and Sing feels like he has his hands pressed to a hot stove, pain searing and burning, and for some reason his hands are still there, still pressed against the stove.

He tries to rationalise it to himself, he’s just been shot, he knows there are people trying to kill them, and he’s also a dramatic little bitch, but he still can’t help but feel like he’s being ripped to shreds by his words.

“Now, now… This young man was instrumental in apprehending your would-be killer. Go easy on him, your highness.” It’s meant to be helpful, he’s sure, but all it does is make him angry, and he sounds like a parent chiding a naughty child, all dripping condescension and careful manipulation.

He’s quiet, then, but he doesn’t leave.

“In here, please, Doctor!” The doctor rushes in, and it’s sort of chaos, for a few seconds, but Sing can still feel his eyes boring into him.

“Here, lie down on the sofa. Any movement is bad for your wound,” Blanca says.

He lies back against the plush cushions, robes draped loosely across his shoulders, bandage around his torso visible from beneath them. He looks sad and tired, and Sing wonders what it is about him that makes him light on fire.

“How are you feeling, your highness?” Blanca asks.

“Monsieur Blanca - I’m so terribly sorry,” he says in reply, but Sing notices he doesn’t really respond to the question.

“This isn’t quite what I had in mind when I invited you over for dinner,” he continues, and Sing wonders why his chest tightens a bit when he says this.

“No need to apologise. You must be very shaken by what’s happened,” Blanca says. He is shaken, he is, he can tell, but of course he would never admit it.

“You are too young… to have so many enemies, your highness,” Blanca says, and if that isn’t one of the truest things he’s heard in a while.

“...The stars were in a particularly inauspicious alignment when I was born, I suppose.” It’s a flimsy excuse and an even flimsier lie, but no one seems inclined to point this out, and Sing suspects that maybe he wouldn’t take too well to it if he did.

“Very well. I will enter into a contract with you.” Huh? A contract? For what?

“...You will?” The expression on his face clears so quickly Sing blinks in confusion.

“That is why you invited me here, is it not?” What the…

“However, I have just one condition. The contract will be to serve as your bodyguard.” Yut Lung looks surprised at this, which means that isn’t what he was expecting. But what was he expecting?

“I refuse to take life unnecessarily. But if anyone tries to harm you, I will not hesitate to eliminate them.”

“Even if that person were Ash?” He knows Ash?

“Of course.”

“So maybe this hit today was a lucky strike. I’m really glad you agreed to a contract, Monsieur. Thank you.” His voice is honey, dripping and sweet, and Sing hates everything about it.

“My pleasure.”

“Sorry to interrupt and all, but - ” Lie. He isn’t sorry at all. “What exactly are you, mister? That was a fast reaction when the guy came down the stairs earlier. Almost like a reflex.”

“Keep your nose out of this, Sing! It’s no concern of yours. Now get out!” Yut Lung says, and Sing wonders why he even bothered to come at all.

He glares at Blanca, and he looks nervous for a moment before smiling widely and saying, “I’m a bodyguard, as you just heard.”

→ ←

They’re gatecrashing. Or on a rescue mission. Depends how you look at it, he supposes. They’ve got a plan set in place.

“They needed extra busboys for the party,” Eiji says. “We went in for interview, and got hired.”

“Pretty smooth,” he says, impressed. “That your idea, Eiji?”

“Yeah,” he says, a pleased flush splashed across his cheeks.

“They know you, though. Make sure you don’t blow your cover.”

“That is same for you too, Sing. Yau-Si will be there, right?” He is. He knows. How could he forget?

“Right,” he says. “That is a problem.”

It isn’t.

→ ←

Drip, drip, drip.

His bottle of champagne has been knocked over, and he isn’t too sure of when or how it happened, but there are rivers of transparent gold running across the tabletop.

His finger circles his glass, round and round and round, and messy strands of hair have escaped from his braid and hang loosely around his face.

He feels nothing and he feels everything.

“Master Yut Lung.”

The man bends down, and says in a low voice, “Sing-Soo Ling here to see you.”

His skin prickles and his veins sing, and he tells him to let him in.

“But - ” the man begins, but he is out of patience, and he screams, “I said, _let him in_!”

“Throwing another wine-soaked tantrum?” He hasn’t his heard his voice in so long, and his blood is on fire and his body feels hot, hot, hot.

He’s standing there, chin jutted, eyebrows drawn tightly together, flanked by two of his guards, who are looking somehow both angry and confused at the same time.

He feels himself soften, like butter in the heat, and he says, “Hey...” He doesn’t let himself continue, because he doesn’t trust himself to say anymore than that.

“The rest of you, leave the room,” he says, because he hasn’t seen him in _so long_ -

“But Master Yut-Lung! We cannot risk leaving you alone with - ”

“I said, _leave the room_!” He needs this so _badly_ , just a moment, something, anything at all -

“...Talk about a total tyrant. They’ll slip you something one of these days.” He still looks angry, but that’s okay, he would give anything just to see him at all.

“Let them. I can sniff out even the smallest traces of poison. I know a lot more about that stuff than they ever will.” For better or for worse, he supposes. “Want a drink?”

He turns, and realises that he’s pointing a gun at him.

He isn’t surprised to realise that he is once again staring death in the eye, but his chest feels like it wants to explode when he realises that Sing is the one who is pointing it at him.

He can’t blame him, really, but he can’t help the ripping, gaping emptiness that fills him.

“...Go ahead,” he says, quietly but with conviction, “You’re absolutely justified.”

He thinks he catches something flicker on his face, but he knows that it’s just wishful thinking.

“...You wanna die that bad?”

How can he reply when he doesn’t know what the answer is?

“I heard from Blanca about why you hate your family so much,” he says. Fuck! Of course he did. There’s pity on his face and he hates it, hates it, _hates it_.

“...He’s got a big mouth!”

“And, hell, I understand where you’re coming from, but - ” He doesn’t - he doesn’t know what it’s like, and he wants to tell him to take his faux sympathy and shove it straight up his ass.

“Oh, stuff it! Don’t presume to understand me!” He’s angry, so angry, and he knocks over his glass of champagne and flings a cushion through the air.

“Just listen to me, will you!” He goes quiet, and then stares at the liquid trickling around the broken glass on the floor.

“Look. I thought it was cool that you were taking over the Lee syndicate. Well, maybe not how you did it - but I thought that you, at least, wouldn’t screw over the other Chinese like your scumbag brothers did all the time.” It’s nice, a bit, knowing that someone, at some point, had a little bit of faith in him, misplaced as it was, but it also destroys him knowing that it didn’t last.

“Well, not only was I wrong about _that_ \- but the _reason_ you teamed up with that bastard Golzine and made Lao go after Eiji - was _jealousy_ , of all the pathetic things!” There are cords in his neck that are taut and visible, and he’s flushed, and he’s filled with an unimaginable rage because he hates how goddamn _right_ he is and - “ _Shut up_!”

“Like _hell_ I’ll shut up!” Sing shouts, and maybe once he admired his fire but now his jaw is clenched so tightly he thinks his teeth might shatter because of it.

“You couldn’t stand it that Ash had someone he really trusted and cared about! It killed you that Ash found something you couldn’t have yourself… so you tried to destroy it!” He’s breathing hard, and he’s wrong, wrong wrong wrong, because he did, there was someone, but he let him go, pushed him away because of everything he’d done, and now he is drowning in sorrow and regret and everything he never wanted because of it.

He slaps him, hard, because he doesn’t know how else to respond, and then a sharp, blooming pain flares on his cheek and Sing yells, “Same to you, buddy!” and he’s really not sure why he hadn’t expected it.

He doesn’t think Sing realises, however, that all he’s had to sustain himself in the past twenty four hours are bottles and bottles of champagne, and he topples, hitting the floor with a hard _thump_ , but he doesn’t even register the pain, because suddenly Sing is _there_ and he looks concerned for some reason, concerned for his worthless life, and he doesn’t really have the energy to keep trying to interpret his feelings anymore.

“Hey… u-uh - you okay?” he asks, and his voice is soft and worried and panicked, and it’s more than he deserves, but he ruins it by saying, “Man, you’re just as weak and girly as you look. I thought you were more like Ash.”

He’s getting really fucking tired of being compared to Ash.

“Well, pardon me! So I’m not a big he-man!”

There’s a silence, and it stretches, stretches, like gum, farther and farther -

“Stop looking back all the time. The past is over.” In Sing’s words, he supposes, that’s easy to say, harder to do.

“And no matter how much you hate the Lees… You are one yourself, and that’s just a fact of life. Call it your fate. Whether you like it or not - you’re our leader… I can’t forgive what you did. And I never will.” He deserves that, he knows it, but he can’t help but feel like he’s bloody and bruised.

“But… the bad blood between us created an opening for the Vietnamese and the Arabs, and I guess that’s my fault as well as yours. Chinatown’s gone to the dogs. People can’t even walk around safely in broad daylight.” Guilt runs through him, hot and heavy.

He’s tired of feeling.

But he doesn’t have a choice.

“So I can’t let you die just yet. First you have to make up for what you did. By taking back Chinatown.”

He can’t… he can’t… “I don’t have what it takes…”

“I’m saying I’ll help you out,” he says. “Quit cursing your lot and stop hating yourself.” But how can he when there’s just so damn much to hate about himself? “Cuz that doesn’t get you anywhere.” Horrifyingly, he feels my cheeks grow damp as tears spill and leave tracks on his face.

It sounds so simple when you put it like that, he thinks, but it’s anything but simple.

“What now?” he asks, pink tingeing his cheeks.

“It won’t work out… as easily as you seem to think,” he says, and his quiet sobs punctuate his words, and he feels weak, vulnerable, open and exposed, and he hates it, feels just a little cold, like his teeth will start to chatter and his body will tremble from the biting wind. “Hating my brothers… was my whole life so far. It’s the only thing that kept me going.” He thinks it’s sad, probably, that his whole life has been fueled by raging and a relentless desire for vengeance, but there was a time when he couldn’t imagine what it was like to live without it.

Now, he can. Life is bitter and empty, and he drowns himself in wine and regret.

But perhaps that’s just what he deserves.

“If I didn’t have that… I would’ve given my life up years ago…” It feels real to say it out loud, but it also sounds pathetic and cowardly.

“Look - ” he says, and his voice is softer, softer than he deserves, “ - you’ve avenged your mom’s death. It’s over. So put it behind you.”

Easier said than done, Sing. He only wishes it were that easy.

“And, hey, in spite of everything I…” he pauses, long and deep, like he’s wondering whether it’s a good idea or not.

“I don’t hate you.” He looks up, then, tears still falling, at Sing standing above him with rose colored cheeks and sad eyes and shuffling feet, and wonders why those words coming from his mouth make him feel so much.

He’s lying. He doesn’t wonder.

He already knows the answer.

“There’s something about you… that I just can’t hate. Cause you’re hurt… your soul’s bleeding - even now…” He hates the words coming out his mouth, but he can’t get enough, and he thinks that maybe this is what it’s like to get high on ecstacy while bleeding to death. “You’re like Ash that way.” The tears flow faster now, hot and wet, drip, drip dripping onto the sweater that hangs limply on his frame.

“Jeez!” he shouts. “Will you stop crying like a girl all the time?”

“Pardon me for being exactly the way I look! Weak and girly! All right?” He wipes his tears away with the back of his hand.

“Why do you always have to get so defensive!?” Probably because he’s sensitive and mentally unstable. “You drive me nuts, I swear!”

“If I drive you nuts, just leave me alone!”

“See? That’s what I mean!”

He’s not perfect, but he thinks that maybe he’ll be okay.

Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are wonderful,,,


	3. laughing aloud at the spinning stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo, boy. it's here, everyone. actual "original" writing! wild. no plot stealing, and, well. now i'm beginning to discover that plots aren't actually my forte. so i present to you, pwpwp, plot without plot, without porn. sorry, guys. ain't gonna happen. so,,, no plot, no porn, just a lot of angst. gear up, boys, cause this is just the beginning of what is going to be endless pain. i'm sorry. it's a cruel world. enjoy!!
> 
> also i'm v nervous about posting this chapter!! i hope it's okay jesus christ

Sing keeps coming over. There are good days and bad days, and Sing likes the good days because a good day is when Yut Lung has been eating and he isn't drunk, and Sing can talk to him. It's weird, because he didn’t expect to enjoy talking to Yut Lung as much as he does.

There are also bad days, and on those days he smells like wine and his hair is piled high on his head with curled, greasy strands that escape and he's usually passed out on the floor of his parlor, and Sing has to take him to his room and put him to bed.

Sometimes on his bad days Yut Lung is still awake enough to talk to him, and Sing hates those days the most because he asks him questions that he doesn't know how to answer.

Questions like, “Why are you still here?”

Questions like, “Why do you keep coming back?”

Questions like, “Will you stay with me?”

Too many questions.

Questions like that, where his usual response is, “Let’s get you to bed,” and at those words Yut Lung falls limply in his arms and, with some difficulty, is carried to and laid carefully on top of the cool silk of his thick duvet.

One day Yut Lung asks him, “Do you miss him?” and Sing isn’t quite sure what to say because this isn’t a bad day, it’s a good day, and he never asks questions like these on good days.

His heart tightens, beating, pulsing flesh stretched tight, tight, tight, and he feels the red on his cheeks and the wetness in his eyes.

He wants to say “who?” just so that he can fill the silence that gapes between them, but they both know it’s a pointless question to ask and Sing knows that Yut Lung doesn’t like wasted words.

Instead he says, “What do you think?” and when he turns to look at him, there are eyes the color of crows’ feathers and spilled ink, and Yut Lung turns away quickly, hair like black diamonds, but Sing doesn’t miss the twisting of his features before he does.

“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if he was still here,” Yut Lung says, which surprises him, but the caustic edge to his tone doesn’t.

He pauses, and Sing wonders if it’s all for the melodrama or suspense. It probably is - the only other thing he could be doing is thinking about what he’s going to say, and Yut Lung never thinks about what he says.

He just says it. “But then I realise that if he was, _I_ probably wouldn’t be.”

Sing wonders about the truth of this statement, and then he wonders which scenario he’d prefer.

And again, he finds himself not knowing the answer to another question.

On another day, a good day, he decides to ask a question. Good days are rare, so while he’s in the midst of another, he’s loathe to waste it, but it isn’t a question that’s very well suited for a bad day.

“Do you regret it? Any of it?”

It’s mostly surprise that passes across his face, but there is an undercurrent of anger, and despite himself, he feels afraid.

“Oh, what, so you think you’re the only one that can ask difficult questions?”

“I never ask difficult questions,” he replies, and it sounds a bit like he’s trying to be petulant but Sing isn’t stupid. It’s all just an act.

He’s getting better at that. Reading him. He wonders absently if that’s a good thing or not.

He feels like he should laugh, but he’s not in the mood to play games, not today.

So he just stares, he stares and stares until Yut Lung takes off his mask and turns away.

“What do you think?” he echoes Sing’s words, laughing a cold, empty laugh as he does.

What does he think? He doesn’t know. He wants to believe that he does. He wants, _so badly_ , to believe that he does.

There is regret. An abundance of it. But what part of it is regret? Was it the part where he murdered all his brothers, except for half of one? Was it the part where he tried to kill Eiji Okumura because he was everything he couldn’t have? Was it the part where he made promises he never kept? The part where he was possessed by cruelty and convinced himself it was for the greater good? The part where he hadn’t seen Sing for so long that he had probably forgotten what he looked like?

Or was it just the part that reduced him to a wine soaked, self pitying mess on the plush carpets of his richly furnished home?

Was it just the end he regretted?

Or the beginning?

Something in between?

Maybe, maybe. Maybe it was everything. Maybe it was just Sing.

He still isn’t looking at him. His hair falls in soft waves around him, he hasn’t braided or tied it today, and it looks like it would feel like the silk on his duvet. His head is sagged against his chest, and when Sing brings his hand to his chin to turn his face towards him, the skin is soft like dandelions and wilted flower petals and warm like hot chocolate in the wintertime.

He must have lost his touch. He was wrong, he isn’t getting better at reading him. Today is not a good day, his hair smells like whiskey, sharp and tangy, and he’s fallen asleep.

With some regret, he takes his hand away from his face, and carries him to bed.

→ ←

 _Stop coming_ , he wants to say, but can’t. _You’re too good for me_ , he wants to say, but can’t. _Don’t waste your time on me_ , he wants to say, but can’t.

He doesn’t want him to go.

So maybe he’s selfish. That’s okay. He’s known that for a while, now. He wants to just have this. Have something he can pretend is his.

He doesn’t want him to see him like this, however, drunk and woeful, when he slurs his words, smells like wine, or even isn’t altogether conscious. He likes to forget, but he wishes he could remember what Sing’s arms feel like around his slender frame.

All he knows is that when he wakes up on top of his duvet, and has no memory of even falling asleep, he knows Sing has come by. He hates and loves waking up like this, because he knows Sing has touched him, come to him, but he wasn’t awake enough to even remember it.

He likes it when Sing comes when he hasn’t had anything to drink, because they talk and talk for hours, and it doesn’t matter that Yut Lung stares at him for almost the whole time, looking at the skin on his cheeks and the freckle next to his right ear. Looking at the lines at the corner of his eyes when he laughs, which he does more now and it makes him feel warm, because it sounds a bit a fleece blanket, a little bit rough but very, very warm. He looks and looks, looks at everything except his eyes, because the few times his eyes had strayed, what he found there scared him, more than he would care to admit.

It holds something, something deep and terrifying, and Yut Lung doesn’t know what it is but there’s something inside him that thinks he’s afraid to.

He likes hearing him talk. It doesn’t matter what it’s about. Sometimes he talks about Eiji, which Yut Lung hates, but doesn’t, really. He only pretends to hate it so Sing will keep talking. Sometimes he talks about his gang, and sometimes he slips up and mentions Shorter’s name, and he can feel the words inside him freeze and wither, trapped somewhere between his throat and his lips.

Sometimes he brings Chinese food, and they eat it together. He has a chef, and Sing knows this, so he isn’t sure why he keeps bringing him food, but he never complains so they eat out of styrofoam boxes together, noodles and fried rice and xiao long bao.

Their words punctuate the careful clicking of their chopsticks, soft and loud, quiet and sometimes harsh. Sing speaks strangely, he notices, brimming intelligence that’s masked by incomplete sentences and portmanteaus.

He finds he doesn’t mind it.

No, he doesn’t mind it at all.

Sometimes, when he’s had a quite a bit of wine but he’s _just this side_ of sober, he tells Sing to drink with him. It’s just, he feels so _alone_ , and when Sing comes, he feels less alone. And if he just had a bit of wine…

Just a little bit…

He says no, usually. “I’m pretty sure that’s bad idea,” or, “You’ve had enough, I think,” and then his champagne flute disappears, and he’s being led back to his bedroom.

Sometimes he says yes, though, and Yut Lung likes those days a lot, because even though he likes Sing sober, when Sing is tipsy, Yut Lung feels like his edges are blurred and everything is softer, and he laughs more, and he doesn’t notice when Yut Lung stares at his mouth. He also touches him a lot, mostly because he’s a clumsy drunk, and he trips over his feet and a lot of the time Yut Lung is the closest thing, and he grabs onto his sleeves or his arms or sometimes his neck.

He’s so warm, and it’s strange because he thought that alcohol was the only thing that could make him warm again, but it turns out Sing can, too. He likes it the most when he wakes up in bed and Sing is right next to him, he hasn’t left to go away, he hasn’t just brought him to bed because he was drunk and passed out on the floor.

Their limbs are always tangled and his face is always inches away from his, and in these moments he can’t help but notice that his lashes are thick and long, longer than they have any right to be, and also that sometimes when he sleeps he makes a very soft snuffling sound.

The feeling of euphoria is always undercut by the feeling of longing. Longing for this to happen when Sing isn’t drunk, longing to be able to wake up next to him and remember what happened the night before, longing for him to stay without intoxication and regret.

He’s always the first to wake up, and the last to leave. He pretends to be asleep, and when Sing wakes up, untangling their limbs and slipping out of the door, he stays for a while, wondering why he feels so heavy.

One time after he says yes to a glass of wine, and then another and another, Sing is sprawled on the floor, and he looks like he might be either about to fall asleep or about to throw up. Yut Lung stands, because he’s realised that they’ve run out of bottles that aren’t empty, and he needs to get more. He wobbles a bit, his balance is off, but he steadies himself on - oh. Sing is standing up, too.

“I was going to get more wine,” he pouts, but he doesn’t know why he’s pouting.

“Yeah,” Sing replies, blinking slowly. “I was... I was gonna come with you,” he slurs, and when Yut Lung looks up into his eyes, a feeling settling in his stomach that tells him _don’t_ but he isn’t quite sure why, they’re unfocused, heavy.

He puts his hand on Sing’s chest, angry for some reason, and then he pauses, looking at his hand there, and he realises that his chest feels hot. Sing looks down at his hand, and, a little unsteadily, asks, “What… what're you doing?”

He takes his hand off of his chest and looks up again.

Why is he looking up?

“Sing,” he says carefully. “When did you get tall?”

He looks surprised, but then he frowns. “Since… since… I don'... How old am I again?”

“Sixteen."

“Since I was sixteen!” he says, triumphant, and then he crumples to the floor.

This time, Yut Lung is the one who carries him to bed.

→ ←

When Sing wakes up, his head is pounding and he’s distinctly aware of the fact that his legs are wrapped around Yut Lung’s, and his hair is in his face. It smells like flowers but also something sharper, and he finds it’s not entirely unpleasant. His legs are smooth and pale, and very, very hot and Sing isn’t sure why, but he expected them to be cold.

He doesn’t know what to do, so he leaves.

The next time he comes, he tells him that he won’t ever do it again, and that maybe he should ease up on the alcohol.

He just looks at him with sad, endless eyes, and says, “Don’t you think I would have, by now, if I could?”

It hits him, then, that this is worse than he thought. He doesn’t know how he missed it, it’s been going on for over a year now, and he never noticed, never considered that maybe this isn’t good, maybe this isn’t normal.

He goes away, then, and he comes back with boxes of Chinese food and an uncertain smile, and maybe he’s imagining it but it looks like the edges in his eyes soften a little.

His glass of red wine goes untouched for the rest of the night.

After that, Sing comes over almost every day. A lot of times when he comes, there’s an empty bottle of champagne and another one still that lays half full, and he has to take away the rest of it. Other times, he finds broken glass and a damp spot on the carpet, and these times he finds him curled up and crying.

There is nothing he can say so there’s nothing he does say, he just sits there quietly, sometimes touching and other times, rarely, so rarely, he wraps his arms around him, waiting for his shaking to stop and his tears to dry, but by the time that happens he’s still in his arms, breathing deep and even.

When he does, Sing holds him tighter, because he’ll never remember.

→ ←

One day when he doesn’t come, he finds Yut Lung in his apartment.

He lives in a small studio above a sub-par Chinese restaurant with the rest of his gang, and he never told him where he lived, but he isn’t at all surprised that he knows anyway.

His face is blank, and Sing tries to see from his point of view.

The walls are covered with wallpaper that peels, curling strips with tears and holes. It smells like stale noodles, there’s a dented table and cupboards that have seen better days, and probably better contents. The stainless steel sink has been proven to be not as stainless as they had once thought, and it’s always dripping, but they’ve gotten used to it by now. There’s a carpet stained brown, but they don’t ever talk about where the stains had come from. There are worn blankets and thin pillows on the floor, and a door that leads into a room they use often but never stay for long in.

In other words, it’s a dump.

“So this is where you live,” Yut Lung says, voice free of inflection and face devoid of emotion.

“What are you doing here?” he says in response.

“Well, it’s always you coming to me,” he says, and Sing feels like it’s a distorted echo of words that have long since been forgotten. “I thought it was time I returned the favor.”

Sing doesn’t want him here.

It feels wrong, like he doesn’t belong here. Maybe it’s just the fact that now he can see it, too.

The disconnect.

The contrast. White walls and peeling wallpaper, glasses of champagne and a dripping sink, silk duvets and thin cotton sheets, freshly made food and expired packs of ramen.

It’s almost blinding. He wonders if Yut Lung hates him for it. Hates that all he has is some scruffy, impoverished and destitute gang member, who wasn’t even kind enough to take his life.

“So this is why you keep coming,” he says, empty, and oh.

Oh.

He thinks he’s using him. For his money, his wine, his silk duvet and the food his chef makes him that he almost never eats. He thinks he’s an escape.

He’s not. He’s not an escape. He’s not running from his crumbling studio, he’s not running from the life he lives, he’s not running from the people who are gunning for him. He’s not running from anything.

But maybe he’s running _for_ something.

“I - No, no, that’s not what I - ” he says, but it’s too late.

“No, I understand,” Yut Lung interrupts, his voice abrupt and bitter. “I would want to get out of this hovel, too.”

Sing looks away. He wishes he could be angry. “Are you gonna stay here and insult me, or are you gonna leave me alone?”

Yut Lung feigns surprise, smiling widely. “I wasn’t insulting you.”

“You sorta were.”

Yut Lung sniffs, face twisting, voice sour. “Can you blame me?”

Fuck. He missed it. He doesn’t know how. His words are too careful. Too exaggerated. Like he doesn’t want Sing to know something, but it’s too late.

He walks over to him, and Yut Lung backs up quickly. “What - What are you doing?”

He grabs him by the shoulders and steers him towards the door.

“You’re drunk. Get out.”

His face flickers. “I’m _not_ ,” he whines.

Sing gives him a look, and he pouts. “Okay, _fine_ ,” he says, sagging against him. “I had a _little_ bit of wine. What’s wrong with that? You drink it with me sometimes, too.”

Sing grimaces. He only did it because it was harder than he thought to say no to him.

“I stopped doing that. Don’t drink any more wine. You really gotta go home,” he says, and he tries to sound sure of himself.

“I already told my driver he could go back,” he sulks. “And I want to stay _here_.”

“Why?”

He goes quiet. “Don’t ask me that.”

“Go home,” he replies.

“I don’t want to,” he says, his voice small and barely audible.

Sing is leading him out of the door. He protests weakly, but he’s too drunk to resist. They go down a dimly lit flight of stairs, and when they open the exit door, Yut Lung’s driver is still there.

He rolls his eyes and looks at him.

“Please,” he looks at him, beseeching. “Don’t make me leave.”

Summoning every ounce of willpower he has, he pushes him into the car and slams the door shut.

He feels so empty.

→ ←

When Sing comes the next time, he’s smoking a cigarette.

Sing finds him on his balcony, smoke disappearing into the air and ashes falling onto the street below.

When he sees him he sighs. “Jesus. That’s the last thing you need. When d’you start doing that?”

He shrugs, the picture of nonchalance. Today, actually. He hated the first one. He still hates it. It tastes vile.

He wanted a habit that wasn’t wine and forgetting to eat. He feels like his lungs are coated in soot, and belatedly he realises that maybe nicotine isn’t that much better of one.

Sing snatches the cigarette out of his hand and drops it on the ground, crushing it with the heel of his worn sneakers. He glares half-heartedly.

“You haven’t eaten yet.” It’s not a question.

Yut Lung looks at him, a bit like, _and what of it?_

“I brought noodles,” he says.

“I have a chef,” he replies.

“Which you never use,” he says in response, and he supposes that’s fair enough.

They eat and Sing talks, he talks about his gang and the Vietnamese, he talks about Eiji again, and he also talks about the gang trying to take over their territory. Yut Lung wonders when he started to care about the things that Sing said.

He doesn’t even remember anymore.

His stomach is beginning to feel pleasantly full, and Sing keeps talking as they move over to the couches in his parlor. He starts to fall asleep during a lull in the conversation, head fuzzy with nicotine and alcohol that Sing doesn’t know about.

When he closes his eyes, he says, voice heavy with drowsiness and something else, “Stay with me.”

There’s a silence, and then Sing says, “I didn’t even know…”

When he wakes up, the sun flooding the room with red light, not quite up yet but not all the way down, he’s alone and the silk duvet is on top of him, this time.

He wonders, then, if he’s beneath it now, why he still feels so cold.

→ ←

The end of the cigarette is glowing. His cheeks are hollowed, and when he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, he exhales messily, smoke fading into the air but the smell still lingering on.

“You should really stop doing that,” Sing says, but he knows that he won’t listen.

“I know,” he says, and gives him a smile that says, _I know that, but I still won’t stop._

He never listens. He hates that he keeps coming back, but he knows exactly why he does.

 _Are you trying to kill yourself?_ he wants to ask, but doesn’t, because he’s afraid of the answer.

“Why do you live like this?” he asks instead, and he hates how vulnerable he sounds.

“Like what? Like I hate my life? Like I’m prolonging the inevitable? Like I have nothing left?” he says, putting out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray and flicking it off the side of the balcony. “Probably because it’s true.” His voice is harsh and cutting, face twisted in distaste.

Sing feels like he might fall apart, like Yut Lung is playing darts with his heart as a dartboard, and every single one has hit the bullseye.

 _You have me,_ he wants to say. _Isn’t that enough?_

He doesn’t, though, because how fucked up would that be?

And he knows that he isn’t enough. He won’t ever be enough.

“You don’t have nothing left,” he says, quietly, and he sounds like he’s broken.

Yut Lung turns and goes inside the parlor.

By the time Sing’s brain has caught up and he goes inside, too, he finds Yut Lung standing there with a bottle of wine.

He walks up to him, close, so close, and takes the bottle away from him. He offers no resistance, and he’s thankful for this until he notices that Yut Lung is looking up at him with soft eyes the color of coal, and his face is inches away, and Sing doesn’t know what to do, so he stops breathing.

Distantly, he wonders when time slowed down. Yut Lung blinks, languidly, eyes roving all over his face before landing on his lips, and Sing swallows.

His lips part, softly, just a little, and Sing inhales.

He smells like cigarette smoke and something spicy, and he thinks that he smells really, really good until he realises that it isn’t just that. There’s something else.

He leans closer. He can smell it, now.

It’s wine.

He notices that his lips are red. He had thought it was just the lighting.

Their lips could touch, right now. If he moved just a little bit closer.

Sing pushes him away.

He stumbles back, his face shocked.

“You’re drunk,” Sing says flatly. How come he never notices anymore?

Yut Lung inhales sharply, eyes wide. “I - ”

“No,” Sing says quickly, avoiding his eyes. “I should go.”

He thinks he hears him call his name as he walks out of the door of the parlor, but he’s always had an overactive imagination.

→ ←

Yut Lung doesn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it. It’s been years. _Years._ Years he’s had this feeling, this feeling of having his head held underwater. Like he’s being held there by some invisible force that won’t let him come up, no matter how hard he kicks and screams silently because he _doesn’t want this_ , he needs air, but eventually he stopped kicking because it was pointless to resist. He knows he’ll sink to the bottom, limp and bloated, but for now he can try to possess the aching inside of him and use it to get some sick, twisted high that he’s not entirely sure is even attainable.

That feeling. He’d thought it was impossible. He’d felt it before, before he fell down into a hole so deep and dark he thought he could never get out. He’d felt all the same things, all for the same person, but he’d thought it was gone, that _he_ was too far gone to ever have it again.

Except this time is more painful than the last, because everything he feels is everything he wanted and everything he didn’t.

It hurts, and he feels like he’s on fire in those moments, and he loves the burn and the pain but he hates it, hates it, _hates_ it.

He'd thought it was just the build-up of too much alcohol and a lack of contrition, but he was so, so wrong.

He’s been breathing stale air for years.

Was it denial or pure stupidity that had stopped him from noticing?

Stopped him from noticing the way he had _noticed_. The way he had noticed how the edges of Sing’s blue jacket had become a bit tattered, and how he picked at the edges of the sleeves and slipped his fingers in the holes of it. The way he had noticed how his eyes flickered when he talked about Eiji, like it hurt him but he wanted to, anyway. The way he had noticed how the hair on the nape of his neck trailed into a ‘v’ of black prickles, and the way he had noticed the way the corners of his eyes crinkle like candy wrappers when he smiles. The way he had noticed his eyes against his will, had noticed how they look like drizzled caramel when the sun hits them at just the right angle, the way he had noticed how his fingers like to sift through the fibers on the carpet when it’s just them together, lying on the floor and talking about nothing.

He'd noticed everything, and somehow, at the same time he’d also noticed nothing at all.

He hadn’t noticed how when Sing came in the room his heart beat fast, really fast, like it could explode if it went any faster, and he hadn’t noticed that sometimes when Sing came close, so close, he could feel the warmth of his skin and it made him want to burn. He hadn’t noticed that sometimes the words that Sing said made him want to tear his skin off, and sometimes the words he said made him feel like everything could fall apart and he still wouldn’t notice, because all he knew was the euphoria he felt from them. He hadn’t realised that he never remembered his dreams, but he often woke up remembering cropped hair, a blue jacket, and a smile that made him weak. He hadn’t noticed the throbbing, aching pain in his chest he felt every time he looked at Sing, he hadn’t noticed it at all, because he had just thought this was a punishment.

Atonement for his sins. He had thought the fire was his penance and hadn’t noticed that the fire hadn’t always burned unpleasantly.

It was so different from before, when the fire had burned but it hadn’t felt like a punishment as much as this one does, and even though sometimes before he had felt like Sing had stuck his hand in his chest and ripped his heart out, he had always felt like he was floating, like he was high on something that he couldn’t get enough of, like heroin, like ecstacy, like LSD. Now it feels like he wants to scream, all the time, because he’s tired of the stinging, biting _agony_ in his chest. The only relief is out of reach and unattainable.

He wants to ask _Is this a blessing or a curse?_ but he doesn’t, because he’s pretty sure he knows the answer already.

→ ←

Sing had no idea.

He had _no idea_ , and he wonders how he could have ever been so _fucking stupid_. How did he _not_ notice it?

How did he not notice the way that he looked at him was long, deep, searching - far too much of any of these things to be considered even remotely platonic?

He had looked and looked for so long, he could perfectly envision his face now, it was so clear in his mind, almost blinding him with details he’d never realised he’d memorised - he could see the lashes that weren’t quite long enough, but thick and dark anyway. He could see the hair so black it looked like glittering obsidian, the hair that looked like it would feel like feathers, the soft, downy kind that you could crush in your hands and open your fist and it would float away, away, away. He could see narrow, sagging shoulders and a collarbone that Sing had wanted to touch, but hadn’t known for what reason.

He knows, now.

His chest feels like there’s a layer of glass coated on top of it, suffocating him, choking him.

Realising he’s in love with Lee Yut Lung makes the glass shatter, and shards are embedding themselves into his lungs, ribs and heart.

It feels like breathing air through his mouth in the middle of winter, it makes his throat cold and his lungs burn. It feels like being pushed out of a plane a thousand feet above the ground, sooner than he’s ready. He feels the air crushed in his lungs, mouth forever open in a scream heard and felt by no one but him. Feels the blinding panic and terror that grips him, holds him in place, feels the wind in his hair that for some reason isn’t cold at all.

He sees the ground getting closer and closer, and he wonders if he’ll be able to open his parachute in time, or if he even has a parachute at all. A heady mix of adrenaline and terror runs fast and hot, hot, _hot_ in his veins, and he doesn’t know if what he feels now is pain or pleasure.

It could have been so good, he thinks, if he hadn’t fallen in love with someone who is more broken than he is.

There aren’t a lot of people who are, now, and he’d gone and fallen for one of the few that were left.

He doesn’t know how this can possibly end well, because Yut Lung is the unstoppable force to his immovable object, or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, the end is unpredictable and almost certainly disastrous, and he doesn’t know if he’ll survive the collision, or if anyone will.

He starts to wonder how he’ll be able continue on like everything’s the same, and then he realises that it’s been like this for a long, long time, so long that he’d gotten used to it, and he thinks that that’s probably the reason he hadn’t figured it out until now.

It’s been there, the whole time, in the way he smiles when he sees Yut Lung curled on his chaise, still awake, no bottles in sight. It’s there in the boxes of Chinese food that he brings, it’s there in the way his gaze lingers just a little too long, it’s there in the way he feels when he smells wine on his breath, in his hair and on his thick, cable-knit sweaters.

It’s there in everything, and Sing wants to fall apart with the sheer force of it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys know the drill - comments and kudos baby!!!!!


	4. holding your breath with your arms outstretched

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow!! another chapter!! hell yes!! all i have to say about this one is that i had an absolute BLAST writing it - it's gonna be crazy!!!!! and i'm hyped as fuck for it!!! if you couldn't already tell!!! i'm gonna be honest i'm not sure it's gonna be Great but. stuff happens, and i tried really hard!!! and i had a lot of fun writing it!!!! also like,, please try to enjoy this one because it's one of the only nice chapters before stuff Really starts happening. i hope you enjoy it!!!!
> 
> also?? i'm considering changing the title of the fic?? idk i just feel like it flows weirdly?? if u have any strong opinions on this matter feel free to let me know

They’re sitting together again. Today is a good day - Yut Lung hasn’t had any wine. It’s probably why the corners of his mouth are tugged downwards, but it hurts a little bit, because it feels like Sing isn’t enough to make him happy.

It’s different, sort of, but also it’s the same. He supposes awareness changes things.

Because now, he does everything the same, but it feels like everything is heightened. The smell of wine on his breath, the heat that emanates from him, slowly, slowly, the scent of hydrangeas and ashes, the hair that shines like moonlight on water, eyes that look like they hold the whole world. 

They’re sitting, now, on the couch in his parlor, and Sing can feel their knees press against each other, warm, reassuring. It’s silent between them, and it often is, but it’s usually comfortable, natural, and this time it isn’t. Sing wants to fill the silence between them, but he isn’t sure what to say.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asks, and regrets it, and he feels like he’s expanding, his flesh tightening around him, he feels like he could choke on the air in his lungs.

He’s holding his breath, and if he never replies, he’ll hold it until he turns blue and sees nothing, anymore.

He holds it for a long time, so long, and it feels like his lungs are being crushed along with his heart, there’s a fist that tightens around it, mercilessly squeezing tighter and tighter -

“Yes,” Yut Lung says simply, and suddenly there’s another fist, and he thinks maybe his heart is beginning to feel a little claustrophobic.

“Are you still?” he asks, and wishes he hadn’t, because now there are nails digging into his heart, it hurts, it hurts so much.

He can hear his heart beating, fast, fast, _bumbumbumbumbum_ , why is it so _fucking silent_ , why isn’t he fucking saying anything -

“I wish I wasn’t,” he says, voice scratchy and wounded, and the fingers have squeezed too hard, the fingernails digging too deep, his heart’s exploded all over his chest, and now there’s pain and heartbreak carved into his ribcage.

His heart isn’t beating, because Yut Lung is in love, and it isn’t with him, and Sing is in love with Lee Yut Lung.

It feels like he is being torn up, slowly, endlessly, torturously, and he wants to scream and cry out but he doesn’t have the strength to. He wants to look at him, so badly, but he can’t bear for him to see the look on his face, which he has no doubt conveys with crystal clarity that he is utterly wrecked.

After a silence so thick with tension you could snap it in half, he turns his head, just enough, just to glance at him. He can’t see his face - it’s hung in shame or fear or maybe just a desire to be anywhere but here, and his hair hangs limply off his skull, like a fractured mobile that perhaps could keep spinning but no longer does.

He’s wished for a lot of things, but he’s never wished for this.

→ ←

“I’m turning seventeen tomorrow,” Sing says. “Did you know that?”

Of course he did. Of course he’d remembered, because how could he forget?

“Have a party here,” he says, because he has nothing else to offer.

Sing looks at him, surprised. “Really?”

“Sure,” he says casually. “Invite whoever you want.” He doesn’t really mean that, and he knows Sing is smart enough to understand. Invite whoever you want - within reason. He doesn’t need his house to go up in flames while his heart is turning to ashes.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. It’s your seventeenth birthday. Make the most of it, and all that.” This is the only thing he has to give him. They don’t do gifts - they’ve come to a silent agreement, of sorts. It’s better this way, he thinks. Easier. Nothing given, nothing received. If he can give this, then perhaps it will be enough.

He thinks that the slow, lazy smile that spreads across Sing’s face is a good indicator that it just might be.

→ ←

The music is thumping, loud and thrumming through the walls of Yut Lung’s mansion. He can feel it vibrating in his bones, rattling the organs inside, and he _loves_ it.

He’s had _far_ too much to drink, a dangerous mix of champagne, beer, and vodka swirling in his veins and he feels like he could do _anything_. Just to test Yut Lung, and maybe also because he’d wanted to, he’d invited Eiji. He regrets it a little, now, because Eiji had looked more than a little lost for a long time, unused to the blaring bass and heavy intoxication surrounding him. After half an hour of watching his growing discomfort, he’d pulled him aside and said, “You can leave if you want, man. I know this ain’t really your scene.”

Eiji’s face had changed from anxious to relieved so quickly that Sing had felt a little bad about not doing it sooner, and watched as Eiji slipped out of the door, feeling sad that he hadn’t been able to enjoy himself more.

He’d invited the rest of his gang, of course, and they all seemed to be having a good enough time, scattering into smaller groups and distributing copious amounts of alcohol and weed, and a few of them had been bent over tables with credit cards and white powder.

He’s been trying to catch Yut Lung all night, but he’s been elusive, and he’s only caught glimpses of him briefly. By the time he's been able to try and catch up with him, he’s nowhere in sight.

The house is awash with red light - it feels low and sultry. He’d passed by the parlor, once. The door had been firmly shut, and when he’d twisted the handle it hadn’t opened. It had filled him with a feeling he couldn’t explain, maybe relief, because the parlor is _theirs_ , no one else’s. It isn’t for anyone else to litter with Solo cups, for anyone else to destroy the fragile equilibrium they had built there.

He wants to find Yut Lung.

He goes to the parlor again. It’s locked, he knows it is, but he feels like maybe, just maybe -

The door opens, and Yut Lung is sitting on a chaise, alone, glass of red wine in hand, and he turns as Sing enters.

He looks beautiful. Like a statue, carved from nimble hands that have a knack for creating things that can take your breath away. His hair is done up carefully, braids and thick, glossy locks of raven hair piled high on his head. His skin is like marble but bathed in red light, and there is silk woven with intricate patterns cascading from his arms and his body.

Sing wonders why he can’t breathe anymore.

The music is thumping, loud and yet somewhat faint, beating in time with his heart, _thumpthumpthumpthump_.

Yut Lung tilts his head a little. “Happy birthday, Sing.” He smiles, then, and it’s barely anything, but it makes Sing’s heart want to explode.

He doesn’t smile that often. Sing thinks that maybe he likes that, a little. He can pretend that the times he does smile are rare, like precious gems, gems that he can hold close and pretend are gifts. A smile just for the two of them, a smile that's for no one else to see, no one else to hold like he does.

Sing has always liked to pretend.

“Thanks. Party’s great, too. Everyone seems to be having a pretty good time. Are you?” He’s stuttering a little, slurring his words.

“I don’t know, Sing. Are _you_ enjoying yourself? It is your party, after all.” Sing doesn’t like the way he’s looking at him, like he’s analysing him, scrutinising him.

“Sure,” he says quickly. “Where you - where’ve you been? I was - I was looking for you.”

“Were you? I’ve just been, you know. Around.”

Sing doesn’t know, but what he does know is that he’s too far away, and that he wants to go closer.

He sits next to him, close, closer than he meant to. Their skin is pressing together, and he feels really hot.

Sing thinks that maybe he has had a bit too much to drink.

Yut Lung turns to look at him, and there’s a strand of black hair in front of his face. His eyes are full of midnight and sparkling stars, and Sing lifts a hand to tuck the strand of hair behind his ear.

He’s breathing harder, and his heart is beating faster.

There’s a hand on his arm that’s definitely not his, and when he looks down he sees that it’s Yut Lung’s. His hand is delicate and his fingers are long, and he thinks distantly that his hand looks nice like this, pale fingers curled around his tanned skin.

When he looks up, Yut Lung’s face is very, very close. His heart is beating so loud, and he wonders if he can hear it.

Their breaths go shallow, shallower, mingling in a mess of heat and booze, and it feels so, so right.

He likes the feeling that burns inside him, a flickering, _roaring_ flame, and he wants to lean closer, closer. He wants to be swallowed up by the flames inside him.

Yut Lung’s eyes are closing, slowly, so slowly, the black of his irises disappearing beneath eyelids that look crimson underneath the light.

Sing stops breathing, and his eyes shut, and then he feels Yut Lung’s lips press against his. His lips are like peaches, sweet and dripping sugar, but his mouth tastes like berries and vanilla, ashes and something sharp.

Everything is on fire, the world is burning, his body is screaming, he’s fallen into the flames, and there are a thousand and one reasons why they shouldn’t be doing this, but right now Sing can’t think of a single one.

It feels like he’s falling faster out of the plane now, it feels like he knows that there isn’t a parachute, but he loves the adrenaline that’s coursing through his veins, he’s never felt so _alive_ , and he feels like if heaven and hell merged to create one place, this is what it would feel like.

Kissing Yut Lung feels like drowning, but he’s starting to realise that maybe he _wants_ to drown.

He presses their bodies close, he wraps his arms around his waist, there’s no room for air, no room to breathe. He can feel the hard lines of his chest underneath the silk of his clothes press against him, and he can feel Yut Lung’s arms wrap around his neck, there are hands in his hair and he can’t get enough.

They stand up together, hands clutching frantically, lips still moving against each other, tongues entwining, slick and hot, and they stumble out of the parlor.

Sing thinks that the world could probably be ending and he still wouldn’t want to stop, still wouldn’t want to take his hands off of him.

They wind up in his bedroom, where there are no red lights, but it would be pitch black if not for the sliver of moonlight that shines through his window.

Yut Lung moves them onto the bed, carefully but with purpose, and they lay there together, Sing with his hands winding themselves into Yut Lung’s hair, which feels like flower petals and satin, and Yut Lung’s hands touching his chest, his neck, his face. Their lips move slower, and they fit together perfectly, like connecting pieces of a puzzle, like the north and south poles of a magnet, like yin and yang.

Their hands go slow now, their lips even slower, and Sing breathes deeper, and then their lips are separating, slowly, slowly, and then sleep takes them.

Slowly, slowly.

→ ←

This time, Yut Lung doesn’t wake up first. He’s buzzing, buzzing. His body feels alight with _something_ , and for a moment or two he’s not quite sure what it is, and then he realises that his limbs are tangled with someone else’s - they’re Sing’s. He feels the memory of Sing’s lips pressed against his, moving, tilting, hot and slick. It makes his skin _burn._

Sing is already awake, and brown eyes that look like fallen leaves and scattered chestnuts are looking straight at him, and everything in him _curls_.

Suddenly skin is sliding, sliding away, and then the warmth that was there isn’t, anymore.

Sing isn’t in the bed anymore, he’s pulling on jeans that Yut Lung doesn’t even remember him ever taking off, slipping on shoes that he doesn’t even remember ever being on his feet. His back is turned away from him, he isn’t wearing a shirt, and Yut Lung can see an expanse of olive skin, dotted with scattered freckles that look like stars in a midnight sky.

Maybe he feels like he’s burning, but he also feels like he’s turning to ice from the inside out.

“Did we…” he starts, just to try and choke the tension that hangs between them, and he realises belatedly that he probably hasn’t helped matters. He props himself up on the bed, elbows digging into his mattress.

“No,” Sing replies without turning around. “I’m gonna go now.”

His elbows slide from beneath him, and he’s sinking into the mattress. It’s always been soft, he thinks, but now it feels suffocating, like it’s pulling him in, like it’s quicksand.

Sing pulls on a black t-shirt, and the skin on his back disappears. Then Sing slips out, closing the door with a soft _snick._

“You always go,” he whispers into the darkness, but there’s no response.

→ ←

On the first day after the party, Yut Lung drinks. He drinks and drinks until his tongue is stained red, and he feels warm, but not warm enough, and there are drops of crimson on his skin. He drinks until he crumples to the floor, and when he wakes up in the morning his neck is sore and he is still on the floor.

Sing hasn’t come.

On the second day after the party, Yut Lung drinks nothing.

Nothing, at least, until the sun sets and the stars come out and the night is black and Sing still isn’t here, and then he drowns himself whiskey because he thinks that tonight is a night for something stronger. He smells rancid, he knows, and his hair is lank and greasy.

When he wakes up, he’s still on the floor and now his whole body aches.

He drags himself into his shower, letting the hot water sink into his skin, running in rivulets over a sunken stomach and ribs that he can feel. Perhaps if he was stronger than he is he would be able to admit to himself that his tears had mingled and run down with the pouring water.

After he gets out of the shower and has towelled himself off, he pulls on a sweater and then he waits.

Perhaps he would try to convince himself that he’s just passing the time, but he’s waiting, waiting for Sing.

Waiting for his uncertain smile and slumped shoulders, waiting for the boxes of Chinese food he inevitably bears, waiting for his shame and regret to be plain on his face.

Waiting for the shame and regret, because there is everything to ashamed of, everything to regret.

Because even though the mere memory of the way Sing smelled, like spices and something vaguely metallic, the memory of the heat of his skin, the memory of the dark eyelashes that fluttered when he came close, the memory of _everything_ makes his skin prickle and his heart pound loudly, it was nothing to Sing, just a mistake, a blip, an embarrassing moment never to be relived.

Why else would he have stayed away for so long?

If Sing forgets, or tries to, so will he.

At least, he’ll pretend he has.

→ ←

It’s 10pm, and Yut Lung hasn’t had any wine. He’s getting tired of waiting, and he starts to wonder if maybe it would be better if he just has some champagne. Sing won’t come, anyway.

It’s 11pm, and Yut Lung still hasn’t had anything to drink. He doesn’t know why.

It’s 12am, and Yut Lung hasn’t had any alcohol. Not yet. He’s tired of waiting, and Sing isn’t coming. He’s not sure why he expected him to.

It’s 1am, and Yut Lung is getting very, very tired. He hasn’t had any alcohol, but he thinks he might fall asleep anyway. Sing hasn’t come, and Yut Lung knows that he won’t.

At 2am, when Yut Lung’s eyes start to close, his guard comes up and tells him, “Sing Soo Ling is here to see you, Master Lee,” and suddenly he is wide awake.

“Send him in,” he says, and even though half of him screams that he _shouldn’t do this_ , he says it because the other half is screaming _this is exactly how it should be_.

When Sing opens the door, Yut Lung looks up and says, “Hey,” like he hasn’t woken up two nights in a row alone, drowned in alcohol and bitterness, curled up on the parlor floor, carpets thick and plush but not enough.

He’s holding a bag of Chinese food. “Hey. Sorry I came by so late.” He doesn’t offer an excuse, and for this he is grateful. He would have seen through it, anyway.

He looks tired. He’s paler than usual, and there are dark bags under his eyes that were certainly not there before.

They eat in silence, and Yut Lung can feel the tension crackling between them, sparking and popping.

He’s sure that Sing can feel it, too.

He’s tired. Really tired, and after they’re finished eating he curls up on the chaise with a pillow clutched tightly to his chest. Sing moves next to him, the chaise dipping as he settles on it, and Yut Lung shifts. He sits up, a bit, blinking drowsily, pillow slipping from his arms. Sing probably thinks he’s drunk.

He leans on Sing, partly because he is so exhausted he can barely support himself anymore, and partly because maybe he’s a little bit cold, and Sing is right there, and he’s _so warm_.

“I haven’t had anything to drink,” he says, because he feels like it’s important that Sing knows this.

“Yeah?” Sing asks, voice thick.

“Yeah,” he says, and their shoulders are pressed together, close, and they are both in flames. Yut Lung turns his head a little, so that he can look at Sing, just a little bit. Just for a little while, and then he realises that Sing is already looking at him, with bright eyes that burn with something he wishes he could touch.

And then his hands are sliding over Sing’s chest, and he’s looking at his lips, which are a deep pink, and soft, so soft. His hands move upwards, sliding up his neck, over his throat which is bobbing, up down up down up down, over his jaw, which is covered in the slight prickle of stubble. He cups his cheeks, and Sing’s eyelids are fluttering rapidly, which is a shame because it means he can barely see his eyes.

“What are you doing?” Sing says, and his voice sounds like it’s tearing at the seams.

“I haven’t had anything to drink,” he says, and he knows he hasn’t answered his question but he feels like he needs to say this again, anyway.

“Yeah,” Sing says, and then they are kissing.

The angle is awkward, and their lips meet slower. Yut Lung repositions himself so it’s easier to hold him, and it feels soft and hesitant.

It feels like a first kiss, even though it isn’t. Yut Lung’s arms wrap around his neck, and then they are closer, but there is room to breathe, and he feels like he finally can.

He feels Sing’s hands around his waist, and it feels so different from the last time they had done this, because their last kiss was hard edges and desperation and overwhelming _want_ , and this time it’s softer, more delicate. Hesitant, like they’re testing the limits.

Sing’s lips are warm and pliant, and Yut Lung never knew that anything could taste so sweet.

His fingers start to brush the back of Sing’s neck, and then Sing’s grip tightens around his waist, and they break apart, breathing hard, eyes dark.

Sing’s lips are red and swollen, and he feels a faint satisfaction in knowing that that was his doing.

“I - ” Sing starts, but Yut Lung interrupts.

“Stay here. Please?” He’s tired. He just wants to wake up in a bed, and not alone.

Sing falters. “I - Oh, fine.” He thinks he could smile now, maybe.

Sing carries him to bed.

→ ←

It feels softer, now. Love, that is. Like it’s justified. Not because it’s requited, but because now, at least, he knows that Sing desires a part of him, even if it’s just his face, his hair, his pale skin and lithe form.

It feels like he _can_. Before, it was all too close and yet somehow unreachable, like Tantalus, who was forever reaching for fruit that he could never eat, and water that he could never drink.

He can taste it now, he can taste the fruit and drink the water, and he does, he tastes and drinks in long nights and tangled sheets and sweat-slicked skin.

It’s so, so sweet, but it also tastes bitter, sour, it makes his mouth twist.

He has always considered there to be two states of being in love: _not in love_ and _in love._

He was wrong. Being in love is like falling down a hole, and when before it made him burn, now it consumes him, devouring him, and he wonders if he can ever crawl out. He’s fallen so deep he can no longer see the light from above, he can barely remember what it was like to not be buried so deep.

He was wrong, because being in love can be measured by how far you've fallen.

Sing comes over every day now. He tries to stop himself from drinking, because Sing never touches him when he does, so he drinks after Sing leaves early in the morning, he drinks because all he feels is pain when Sing isn’t there, all he feels is hopelessness and misery that’s only numbed by the feeling of alcohol flowing through him.

He’s gotten good at hiding it. He always showers before Sing comes, scrubbing and scrubbing until his skin turns pink, brushing his teeth hard, so that no trace of the wine he drinks remains.

His numbness has faded by the time Sing arrives, and the buzzing in his head just sounds like static. By the time Sing’s mouth is on his and his hands are on him, everywhere, the static is gone and euphoria has replaced it.

Every day is like that - waking up to the loss of Sing’s warm body curled around his, drinking, drinking, misery, misery. Purging himself of any trace of intoxication, and then losing himself in the feeling of Sing’s hands, his lips, the feeling of heated skin.

It’s a cycle that’s taking him apart, little by little, the ends are fraying, the threads unravelling, he keeps pulling on them, even though he knows he’s destroying himself, he thinks that maybe that’s his destiny.

Destined to be destroyed, by a man with freckles on his back and eyes that glow brighter than he ever could.

→ ←

Sing thinks that maybe he’s addicted to Yut Lung.

The desire to touch him, be with him, see him, hear the sound of his voice, every minute of every day is so, so present _all the time_ , and it’s getting harder and harder to resist, to follow the pull he feels, to tug on the string and let himself be swept away by it all, but he can’t. He shouldn’t.

He likes this better, somehow, even though he can feel it slowly destroying him. He likes it better because it’s almost the same, except now they know what the limits are. It’s almost the same because Sing still brings him Chinese food, and they still eat it out of styrofoam boxes, and Sing still talks and so does Yut Lung. Except now their hands brush, every so often, just for a little too long, a little too frequently for it to be meaningless. Their touches are loaded with intent, and their eyes are wide and dark.

He doesn’t know what they are. They haven’t talked about it, really. He could ask, of course, but _What are we?_ sounds too much like a confession and not enough like a question.

He supposes he can pretend, for now. Just for now, he can pretend that Yut Lung cares for him, he can pretend that when he sees Sing he is looking at someone he loves, that he’s looking at someone that means more to him than a release, an escape from his misery. He can pretend that he’s worth something to him. He can pretend that when he leaves in the morning, it isn’t because he’s afraid that Yut Lung won’t want him there when he wakes up, but because he needs to go. He can pretend that Yut Lung has stopped drinking because he doesn’t need to forget when he has Sing, and not that he’s stopped drinking because Sing won’t touch him if he does.

Sing has always liked to pretend, but he’s never wanted something so badly that wishes he wouldn’t have to anymore.

He knows one day he’ll have to let him go, because he can see that when Yut Lung looks at him there is nothing in his eyes except bottomless black, and Sing wishes that his eyes could be as expressionless as Yut Lung’s, because he is sure that the fire inside him burns bright in his eyes, too. He knows one day he'll have to let him go, because Yut Lung is in love, and it isn't with him.

If he knows it will end, he can try take what he can, at least for now. He can take the warmth of Yut Lung’s skin, the silk of his hair, the smell of cigarettes and wilting flowers, the heat of his breath on his face. He can take the clicking of chopsticks, the eyes that hold everything and nothing, his lingering touches and heat filled gazes.

He wishes he felt nothing, because then maybe he would have a chance of coming out of this unscathed. It’s bound to end, and when it does, he knows it will be because of emotionless eyes and love that will never be returned.

→ ←

“Can we go into the garden?” Sing asks one night, when they are still in the parlor. He asks because he’s never been in the garden, he’s only admired it from afar, greens and oranges and reds and blossoming purples. He thinks it’s beautiful, and he wants to see it up close.

Sing has never been anywhere that isn’t the parlor or the bedroom, or somewhere in between.

Yut Lung looks at him, surprised. “Why?”

“Why not?”

Yut Lung doesn’t answer, so they go into his garden together.

The air is cool, it’s the middle of November and his cheeks feel pink from the chill in the air. He stuffs his hands in his pockets because they’re cold, and also because he wants to hold Yut Lung’s hand, and he knows that he can’t do that.

It’s dark already, and the moon that’s not quite full casts a gentle glow on the plants that have started to die. Maybe Sing didn’t really think this through, because he thinks he’d forgotten that it’s almost winter, and the flowers aren’t really blooming anymore.

It’s still beautiful, the biting wind that he can feel on his cheeks rustling the leaves on neatly trimmed bushes and trees that bear fruit in the summertime, maybe.

There’s a stream trickling somewhere nearby, but he doesn’t care, because all he can see is Yut Lung, and his hair looks like it’s shimmering under the moonlight, it’s loose and wavy, draped across a sweater so big he looks like he’s drowning inside it. It looks warm and thick, and Sing just wants to put his hands inside it. His mouth is open, a little, and his lips are soft and glistening, his cheeks just a little bit pink from the cold. His eyes are an impossible black, the moon reflected back inside them, shifting and twisting, and Sing thinks that Yut Lung maybe looks like beauty personified.

He pulls him over to a dark wooden bench, and his lips part even more, strands of raven hair flying in his face.

They sit there for a while, and Sing watches their breaths curl against the dark backdrop of the sky and the faint orange glow of lights that line the path, dancing and twisting with each other before disappearing into the night.

Sing’s hands aren’t in his pockets anymore, they’re on the bench, and they are very, very cold, and he knows he shouldn’t, but part of him hopes that Yut Lung will put his hand on top of his.

The sky is dark, very dark, but Sing wouldn’t really say it’s black, it’s more just a dark gray, and the moon - where has it gone? The stars aren’t there anymore -

Sing feels a drop of rain trickle down his neck. He turns, and Yut Lung is already looking at him, and then the sky opens up and rain is pouring. It’s cold, so cold, this autumn rain, but neither of them moves, neither of them makes a sound, and Sing can see Yut Lung’s hair is wet and dripping and his sweater is drenched.

They don’t go inside, but Sing feels Yut Lung’s hand close on top of his, and he flips it over and intertwines their fingers.

His hand is cold and wet but it’s also warm, and Sing wishes they could do this without expectations and silent confessions hanging between them.

He loves the rain, loves the sting and the ice spreading through him, but he hates it, because he can barely see the look on Yut Lung’s face at all.

They sit there for a few minutes, fingers laced together, neither of them moving, steadily getting wetter and wetter, and then Yut Lung rips his hand away, and for a moment Sing feels like he might fall apart, but then there are warm lips on his and arms wrapping around his neck.

His lips taste like rain and smoke, and his heart feels like it might combust, he feels like it’s searing, like he’ll burst into flame while the rain pours down on them both.

Sing thinks that if this is what love feels like, then maybe he likes it, a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos make me feel validated so hop on that shit!!!!


	5. speaking plainly and painfully

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmaooo guys i am So Sorry in advance!! not only is this one a fucking WHOPPER - it's also gonna be super fucking painful. jesus fucking christ this was so fucking hard to write like,, ngl i teared up a few times while writing it but. it is here. and i Know that i don't Really have a consistent uploading schedule or any of that jazz but like. i've been posting every other friday recently and i just felt obligated to stick to that so!! i tried really hard to put it out in time so!! here it is!! and i hope you enjoy!!
> 
> also!!!!! HUGE thanks to my best bae [kwanies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwanies/pseuds/kwanies)!!! who is the Ultimate Queen!!! not only have they betaed this goddamn BEAST of a chapter, they've also given me just endless moral support and!! i'm so grateful i love u queen!! 
> 
> ps - this chapter is best enjoyed (or not) with a sad song or two :(

Six months after it begins, Yut Lung isn’t careful enough.

It starts the same as it always does. Sing comes, they have Chinese food, they eat, and then Sing leans in to kiss him, but then he jerks back.

“Have you been drinking?” His voice is sharp, accusatory, and Yut Lung feels frail, like he’ll crumble under the weight of it.

There’s no use denying it - what is he supposed to say?

He smells like wine, he’d forgotten, and now Sing’s noticed, and he doesn’t know what to do, what to tell him.

He looks away.

“What the fuck? I thought you stopped.”

 _No_ , he wants to say, _You wanted to believe that I’d stopped, because it was easier than helping me._

“You were wrong,” he says instead, voice like broken glass. 

Sing flinches, like he’s been slapped. 

“But why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t even…”

“How is it any of your business?” he snaps, and Sing shrinks.

“I thought…” Something rises in Yut Lung’s chest. What does he think? Does he think that they’re lovers? That they trust each other? That they care about each other?

Thoughts like those are foolish daydreams, but Yut Lung can’t help but chase them anyway.

“I just thought you would tell me,” Sing finishes lamely.

He doesn’t need to tell him he was wrong again, because Sing already knows that, and he doesn’t like wasted words.

The silence chokes them, clogging their throats and making it hard to breathe. It feels like his throat is coated in honey, sickly sweet sugar rising up and making him want to gag.

“How… how long have you been doing this?” He sounds unsure, like he’s afraid to know the answer, and distantly Yut Lung thinks, _He should be_.

“Drinking? Destroying myself?” he pauses. “Who says I ever stopped?”

Sing looks shattered, pieces of broken glass like the champagne flutes he would throw against his walls in fits of rage and self-pity, sparkling diamonds and golden liquid spilled all over his white walls and cream colored carpets, the sound of it shattering against the walls tinkling and melodic, but sharp and dangerous.

“Are you going to kiss me or not?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

The shards of broken glass sharpen, and all of a sudden Sing’s face goes from soft and defeated to hard and cutting, and Sing makes him feel safe, he makes him feel wanted, but not now. Now, Sing makes him feel afraid, except he’s not afraid of Sing, he’s afraid of the words that could come out of his mouth, because he is already cracked, so cracked, and he thinks that if he wanted to, Sing might just destroy him.

“Are you fucking serious?” Sing asks, voice low and deadly. “Are you _fucking serious_ right now?” His voice is ascending in volume, and his skin is prickling, he’s so afraid.

“You fucking get drunk _every goddamn day_ so you can _forget me_ , so you can _forget who I am_ , so you can fucking _get off_ and pretend I’m _him_. I will _never_ be him, and I think you fucking know that, and that’s exactly why you drink, because you can’t have whoever it is - ” Sing’s voice breaks, and his cheeks are red, he’s breathing so hard, and Yut Lung just wants to fall to the floor and _weep_ , because Sing thinks he’s in love with somebody who isn’t him.

Then Sing’s expression lightens, but it feels strange, sort of filmy, like he’s looking at him through a scratched plastic lens. “It’s nothing I shouldn’t have expected though, huh? I’m really not sure why I didn’t see this one coming.” His voice is so, so bitter, it feels like unsweetened tea that’s been sitting forgotten for too long, and Yut Lung wants to tear his own heart out and carve out everything inside it, because he thinks that would probably be less painful than this.

Sing is so, so wrong, because he drinks, he drinks so much, he drinks to forget, Sing was right about that, but it isn’t Sing he wants to forget.

He drinks so that Sing is all he can remember. 

“You’re wrong,” is all he can say, and his voice sounds like stitches being ripped apart.

He wishes desperately now for Sing’s dry humor, a sharp voice saying, “Oh, yeah? Please, your majesty, tell me why you think so.” 

But all he says is, “I don’t think I am,” and now Yut Lung thinks maybe he’s the one who has shattered into pieces of broken glass.

They stay there for a long time, Sing breathing hard, his shoulders slumped and fists clenching and Yut Lung sits bonelessly on the floor, limbs splayed, chest heaving and heart breaking, and all of a sudden he hates the heavy smell of wine that surrounds him. He smells like a distillery, and he feels sick whenever he inhales it.

“Are you going to leave?” he asks, even though he’s scared to know the answer.

“I think I have to,” Sing says, and even though every fiber of his being screams _Don’t go!_ Yut Lung thinks that he probably does.

He thinks he should probably nod, or give him some sort of sign that _he understands_ , but all he does is close his eyes, because now the lights seem too bright and the silence between them seems too loud.

“I’m going to go now,” Sing says, and then all Yut Lung hears is the dragging of his footsteps and the gentle _click_ of the door closing. 

Sing makes him want to bleed, but he wonders if he will ever come back.

→ ←

He doesn’t come back. 

At least, not for a week. Seven days that stretch and stretch and stretch, it feels like stretching old gum, it’s hard, its elasticity faded and ready to snap at any moment.

 _He’s_ ready to snap at any moment. He’s at his breaking point.

When Sing leaves, Yut Lung drinks. He drinks bottles and bottles of red wine, and he doesn’t even remember how many he’s finished, because when he wakes up the next morning, collapsed on the floor with limbs aching and a crick in his neck, there’s a faint burgundy stain next to his hair and no bottles in sight. 

It’s probably a good thing that his cleaner can take care of messes Sing isn’t here to clean up. 

He does this for five days. He drinks, drinks, _where did Sing go?_ , barely remembers to feed himself. There is a hot meal taken up to him three times a day, and he leaves most of it uneaten, but he forces himself to choke down some of it because he thinks that if he doesn’t, he might die, and he doesn’t want to die. Not, at least, before seeing Sing one last time.

He’s miserable, so miserable, and isn’t just what he deserves that after all he’s done, this is what he’s come to - drinking wine that makes him feel no better, but can make him feel a little warmer, wine that makes him forget but not enough, wine that numbs the feelings inside of him, a hailstorm of misery, regret, agony, and love that will never be requited.

Wine that does everything, wine that does nothing.

On the sixth day, he is sober. He picks himself up off of the carpeted floors that are soft to the touch but not soft enough for him to sleep on. Despite this, Yut Lung had still found himself waking up on it three nights in a row.

On the fourth and fifth nights, it would seem he’d learned his lesson, because he'd woke up on his chaise, instead, his limbs and neck a little less sore than before, but on the fourth night there had been a small puddle of vomit below it that he hadn’t remembered being the cause of. After the fifth night, the chaise had smelled like booze and cigarette smoke. 

He doesn’t drink anything on the sixth and seventh days, and he thinks those days are the hardest, because he hasn’t seen Sing in _so long_ , and he feels like he’s falling apart, and _god_ would some wine make this just _so much easier_ , but he can’t, because Sing left because he was drinking, and Sing won’t stay if he comes back and he’s drunk again.

He doesn’t know if Sing will come back. Sometimes he wonders if he’s waiting for Sing to come back or if he’s waiting for Sing to never return.

He’s waiting for something, that he knows for sure, but he’s yet to find out exactly what it is.

On the eighth day, Sing comes back, and he almost collapses with relief, because he thinks that a big part of him had just accepted that he probably wouldn’t, ever, and now he’s _here,_  standing in Yut Lung’s parlor, and he has Chinese food, again. The smile on Sing’s face makes his heart feel tight, so tight, and he doesn’t know what it is, but he doesn’t mind the feeling of it, doesn’t mind it at all.

He likes this, it feels like it did before, where their kisses are soft but their hands are softer, and every moment they have together feels so _bright_ , it feels like coming home, and it feels like going away to paradise.

He has no wine until a week after Sing comes back, because everything is starting to come back again, he can feel the tidal waves of guilt and overwhelming sorrow start to take over. He’s starting to remember the the blood on his mother’s sickly pale skin and the blankness in her eyes, he’s starting to remember his brother’s blood spattered all over his fireplace, he’s starting to remember the grip of Dino Golzine’s hands on his bare hips, he’s starting to remember everything he was trying to forget. 

So he goes to the one who has never left, and drowns himself in it. And then it happens again. 

They argue, and Sing leaves.

He drinks, stops drinking, just for Sing, Sing comes back, he doesn’t drink, but it never lasts for long, and then he drinks again.

It’s a cycle that seems endless, going in circles over and over again until they’re dizzy, exhausted, and their hearts are worn and tired.

He’s tired, so tired, and he feels like every time they do this his heart is being trampled, and it’s battered and bruised and it takes longer and longer to heal each time, but it never fully does. He doesn’t know how much longer they can continue like this, but something sick and twisted inside of him wants to prolong it for as long as he possibly can.

Then, on a Tuesday evening, when the sun is setting and the light coming through his windows looks like a fiery orange on the white walls of his parlor, the cycle is broken, and, maybe, he thinks, so is Yut Lung.

→ ←

It’s the end of another one of their cycles, and Sing can sense it, this time, his inevitable departure. He’ll walk out again, like he always does, and he’ll tear himself apart for it, but what else can he do? How can he stay when there is so much to leave for? 

He rings the buzzer, and then he walks into the hallway, echoing, empty footsteps soon muffled by the plush carpets of the parlor.

There are iron nails in his heart, and when the bittersweet scent of wine washes over him, the nails are hammered deeper into his heart and the blood flows faster and thicker.

“Are you drunk?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Yut Lung puts his hands on Sing’s chest, and his hands are hot and stained with red, and Sing wants to tear his heart out of his chest, because he can feel waves of sorrow masked by casual indifference radiating from him. He can feel such raw _hurt_ in these moments, their combined agony melding and fusing together to form whatever they’ve become, what was once so new, so fragile and full of life turning into something sick, twisted, depraved.

Sing can feel it rotting between them, foul and putrid. It’s become something he should have anticipated, but hadn’t. There's a part of him that believes it could have been better, he thinks, it could have become something that feels like more than the decaying corpse they’re clinging to, so desperately, a life preserver thrown between them that’s too little, too late.

He’d known it would end, he’d known so well. There's nothing on earth that could make this last, and yet he feels taken aback when he sees the end on the horizon. He would do anything to keep it, to keep whatever had blossomed between them in the beginning, like a butter yellow dandelion coming up after the blanket of white has melted away. He would do anything, but it’s too late. It’s long since wilted, petals fallen and stem sagging.

Yut Lung looks up at him, and his eyes feel so, so full, bursting with emotion and yet so bottomless, so empty it takes his breath away. They’re endless eyes that take Sing apart, tear him to pieces, pull him limb from limb, destroying his heart and his mind.

“What do you think?” he asks, and his voice is low and hushed, almost seductive, he thinks, except there is nothing about this that feels seductive to him. 

“I think you probably shouldn’t be this close to me right now,” he says, and pushes him away, gently, because Yut Lung doesn’t really know how to keep himself balanced when he’s had too much. 

Yut Lung smiles, then, and Sing thinks that if he was sober, perhaps, it could be wicked, but it’s just a little bit wobbly and doesn’t look very wicked at all. “Why?” he asks coyly. “Am I just that hard to resist?” His smile grows wider, and his eyes predatory, stepping closer to Sing again.

“Stop,” Sing says, stepping back. “I’m not doing this with you when you’re drunk.”

Yut Lung pouts, then looks up at Sing again, eyes wide. “But what if you get drunk _with_ me? Then it’s fine, right?” His words sound logical, entreating, but not quite right. Everything is exaggerated, like he’s acting, almost, except when he’s sober he can lie much better.

“No,” Sing says, and Yut Lung’s lower lip starts to stick out. God, he’s had a lot today. More than usual. Normally his emotions are better concealed, a mask that the wine can only chip away slowly at, and never enough to do any lasting damage. At least, not normally. Now, it seems he’s had enough to almost wash it away completely, leaving battered skin and a bruised soul exposed to the harsh winds and stinging cold of reality. 

“Don’t you _want_ me anymore?” he asks, eyes filled with sadness and a nothingness so hollow it aches, and Sing rears back, stung. Does he _want_ him, anymore? It’s a burning ache that spreads through his whole body, sore and exhausted, the feeling that runs through him, then, because all Sing is good for nothing but his body and a convenient release, and he’d known that, he’d known that that was all it was, and yet every part of him _hurts_ , because the confirmation is worse than anything he could have imagined.

He will always want Lee Yut Lung, and Yut Lung will never want him the way Sing wants him. He’s offering more than Yut Lung is willing to take, and Sing wishes he could stop, he wishes he could stop wanting him, he wishes he could stop falling, and he wishes he wasn’t the only one who felt anything at all.  

He’s falling apart, he can’t hold himself together anymore. He feels like a statue made of ashes, he’s trying to keep himself from crumbling completely, but he can feel himself floating away into the wind.

The ashes are slipping through his fingers.

“Why am I not enough for you?” he whispers, his voice is made of cracked china, jagged edges and irreparable cracks.

He won’t understand. He _can’t_ , not in this state, and it makes Sing feel better and worse at the same time, cathartic but also only exacerbating his pain, because now that he’s saying the words, he knows it will be a thousand times harder to say them again.

“Why am I not enough for you? Why do you keep doing this?” he says, louder, this time, but his voice is no less broken.

Yut Lung’s face twists, upper lip curling and features morphing into something bitter and vitriolic, hate etched on every facet of his features, and it burns, it burns in the worst way, like he’s on fire but now the pain feels heightened, the smell of burning flesh in his nostrils and overwhelming heat on his skin.

“Keep doing what? This?” he says, thrusting a bottle he’d dropped on the floor in Sing’s face, voice sharp and stinging, like the crack of a whip on exposed skin. “You think this is easy for me? You think I can just stop?” He sneers, each word twisting the nails hammered into his heart, dripping contempt and derision. “Well, you’re wrong. I don’t think you understand just what it’s like, do you?”

The ashes have crumbled, flown into the wind. Sing couldn’t hold himself together.

“I have _nothing_ left. Nothing except regret and guilt that I can never get rid of. I’m nothing. I have everything I could ever dream of and yet, yet I have _nothing_.” He pauses, and Sing feels a monster of pity and unbearable sadness rearing its head, deformed and ugly and darker than the eyes that he’s long since drowned inside. “I’m wealthy beyond belief and I’ve done nothing to earn it, I’m drowning in money and power and I don’t want _any of it!_ I have nothing, nothing, _nothing_ and it’s exactly what I deserve.” 

Sing wants to tear his own skin off his body, because it isn’t true, it’s not true at all. He has all of Sing. Every inch of him, every breath he breathes, every beat of his heart, every emotion that thrums inside him, all the blood and euphoria that flows through his veins, he has hands that reach but not far enough, he has eyes that betray too much, and he has love, love that burns, love that destroys, love that takes over every part of him and lights him on fire, love that he’s never wanted, and never will. 

He’s shaking, shaking so much, they both are, but Sing trembles with heartbreak and half-formed rage, and Yut Lung is shaking with hopelessness and sorrow.

“How can you say that?” Sing says, and it’s barely a whisper but it feels loud in a room that is suddenly too big.

“How can you say you have nothing? How can you say that when I’ve been here this whole time? I’ve always been here, I’ve brought you food when you wouldn’t have had a single thing to eat otherwise, I’ve been here when you’re drunk and passed out on the floor, I’ve been here when you throw up all over your fucking five thousand dollar carpet, I’ve been here when I’ve told you _so many goddamn times_ to stop _fucking drinking wine_ , I’ve been here when the entire parlor reeks of fucking booze and cigarettes, which is _every other day_ , can I just fucking say, and I’ve been here the whole time when _all you want_ is to _fuck me!_ ” Air, air, he needs air, he feels heat in his cheeks, in his neck, he’s so tense. 

Yut Lung just stands there, shaking, eyes flashing with something that Sing doesn’t understand, and isn’t sure if he ever will. 

He can’t really believe that he just said all that, but he thinks that he can’t really believe that he regrets it, either. He doesn't know how he feels, but now the words are out there, just hanging, seeping into their skin like poison in his bloodstream.

“You’re not even gonna say anything?” Sing asks, rage and fury stinging like nettles on his skin, silence like a noose tightening around his neck.

“You have no idea what you’re saying,” Yut Lung says, eyes hotter than the depths of hell.

“I think I do,” Sing says, voice thickening. “Why am I not enough?” he asks again, voice like splintering wood, fractured and bleeding. He’s quiet, it’s muffled through air that hangs heavy with sorrow and bitter regret, heart-wrenching anguish that tears through his chest. 

“Why can’t I ever be enough?” he says, and Yut Lung’s face is so, so empty, except for eyes that are full and spilling with something he can’t even see, but now there’s something spilling out of _his_ eyes, and he realises he’s crying.

His eyes are searing, they feel so hot, there are tears on his face and it’s been so long since he did this that he’d forgotten what it felt like, to feel the physical manifestation of all his pain and desperation pouring down his face in hot, wet rivulets.

He wishes he could stay, but nothing is telling him to except everything that’s wrong with him. He wishes Yut Lung would tell him to stay, he wishes he would tell him he’s wrong, he wishes he would tell him that he’s enough, but he won’t, because that would be a lie, and he doesn’t lie. Not often, at least.

Sing knows that Yut Lung doesn’t like wasted words.

When he leaves, there’s not a sound of protest, and he hadn’t been expecting one, but it still makes him ache, stones settling heavy in his stomach, weighed down by a bruised heart and endless misery.

His tears flow faster, and there is salt on his lips and grief in the air.

The only sounds after the parlor door shuts are those of muffled footsteps and an aborted sob that he fails to silence.

→ ←

The first time Sing had come back after the cycle that felt like the end of all of them, Yut Lung tries to kiss him.

He’s so close to just giving in, to surrendering himself to it, so close. Close enough to feel Yut Lung’s hot breath on his face, close enough to feel the steady beat of his heart, close enough to feel his chest through his woollen sweater, close enough to feel pale, smooth skin underneath his hands.

He’s not close enough to feel like more than a convenience, so he pulls away.

Yut Lung blinks, coming out of clouded lust and dilated pupils, and breathes deep.

“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” Sing says, even though everything inside him screams _No!_ , even though everything inside him is begging him to take it back, just so he can touch him again, kiss him again.

“Why?” Yut Lung asks, and he looks lost, like he doesn’t know where to go, anymore.

“It’s not a good idea anymore,” he says, and he wishes he wouldn’t have to explain, but he knows he will, because otherwise they’ll be left with a corpse that’s rotted away but not quite, and Sing needs to make it disappear entirely.

Or, at least, put it somewhere they won’t have to look at it, anymore. 

“But why not?” Yut Lung says, eyes wide and hands curling around Sing’s wrists. They’re clutched so tightly Sing thinks they might bruise, but he doesn’t try to ease them off.

“I’m not enough for you,” Sing says, and his voice cracks a little, it’s starting to thicken and he doesn’t like it, not at all. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“That’s not true,” Yut Lung says, but he doesn’t sound sure at all.

“I think it is,” Sing says, and kisses him, one last time.

Yut Lung melts into him, body pressed against his and hands caressing his face, and it’s so, so bittersweet, his lips taste like heartache and tears. Their lips are wet and slide against each other, and Sing doesn’t know whether he’s the one crying or if it’s Yut Lung, or maybe they both are.

It’s a kiss for closure, a kiss for mourning, and a kiss for goodbye. This won’t be last time he sees him, he knows, because Sing doesn’t think he can live without Yut Lung, but he thinks it might be the last time they can touch each other like this, because he’s not enough, he won’t ever be enough, and it’s destroying him. He’s riddled with gunshot wounds, and one more might kill him, so this is their last kiss, their last together.

This is the end of the road, he’s yanking wilted flowers out by their stems, he can feel them snap, the roots still buried deep.

He pulls away, even though he wants nothing more than to lose himself, bury himself in love and grief and longing, but he can’t, he can’t, he’s more than that, he’s more than someone who will never love him back.

When he looks at Yut Lung’s face, it’s wet and his eyes are red, his lips are swollen and puffy, and his hair hangs in loose strands around his face. Sing thinks that he has never looked more beautiful, and he looks away.

“I’ll come back,” Sing says, and he knows that this is a promise he has no choice but to keep. “Even if it isn’t the same anymore.”

“Okay,” Yut Lung whispers, and Sing leaves.

He should feel relief, he thinks, but all he feels is numb and bruised. 

 

i

 

In the first year that they’re nothing, anymore, Yut Lung still drinks. He drinks even more now, because Sing comes over less than he did before. It’s worse, but also better, because he doesn’t think he’d be able to see him more than he already does, because every time Sing is there, he feels like his heartstrings are snapping, one by one. It’s worse, though, because whenever Sing isn’t there he misses him so much his chest hurts to think about him, and when he does he drinks wine so that it will go away.

The first year is a sea of wine, occasional visits from Sing that aren’t often enough, conversations that feel stilted and forced, and sinking deeper into a pit of despair.

The first year, in other words, is hell, except without fire and fury. It’s hell if hell is darkness and numbness, it’s hell if hell is endless misery and unbearable agony.

 

ii

 

In the second year that nothing feels the same, Sing begins to visit less and less often. It’s just, he’s so tired. It hurts so much to be around Yut Lung, and it hurts to see him trying to forget everything with too much wine and nicotine. It hurts, because Sing feels so helpless. He’s _right there_ , he’s within arm’s reach, and he can’t do anything to help him, nothing at all.

 _Stop_ , he pleads, but the sound of his voice is lost in a fog of alcohol and cigarette smoke. _I won’t touch you when you’re drunk_ , he tries, but he knows he’s not enough, how can he be enough when he’s been through so much, and this is the only thing that can make him forget? _Please, please get help_ , he begs, but Yut Lung just sneers and tells him he has everything in control, he doesn’t need help, and _why do you care, anyway?_  

He’d tried everything, he’d tried coming over every day, he’d tried to take the bottles away, he’d begged, he’d been so beseeching, _please, just do something_ , he’d pleaded with his bodyguards, with his servants, but they’d waved him off, like a silly child not worth their time. _That is not our responsibility_ , they’d all said. _The young master knows what is best._ Sing had wanted to cry, to scream, because clearly he _doesn’t_ , he’s destroying himself, and he’s the only one who cares.

He can’t do anything, so he distances himself. He doesn’t come all that often anymore, and when he does because he can never stay away, Yut Lung is always drunk, shrouded in the smell of smoke and booze, and it feels like his heart is being sliced by the broken glass of green bottles emptied of red wine, and it’s bleeding, filling the bottle up with red again. 

When he leaves, he never knows how to feel. He tries not to, at all, but he thinks he might be incapable of feeling nothing for Yut Lung.

The second year is distance, longing, and helplessness. The second year is cigarette burns on his carpets, the second year is scattered corks and crimson stains, the second year is desperation.

The second year is wanting to feel less, and feeling too much.

 

iii

 

In the third year of Sing never being there, anymore, Eiji Okumura moves to New York, permanently. There are no more sporadic visits in which Sing is away for days, weeks at a time - now, Sing is always with Eiji, and his visits slow almost to a complete stop.

It makes Yut Lung’s blood boil, in a way that it never has before, it makes him shake with fury, because why, _why_ is he always ruining _everything?_ Ash had everything in Eiji, and it infuriated him, that Ash was everything _he_ was and everything he could have been, but wasn’t. Ash had everything in Eiji, and Yut Lung had nothing.

He still has nothing. Nothing, except now he thinks he might understand how Ash had felt. It was an all-encompassing love, a love that consumed him, ate him alive, a love that destroyed him, in the end, but it was a love that was known to few and desired by all.

He knows what it’s like, now, to love someone with such reckless abandon, to love someone without limits, to love someone so fully he’s lost himself, and isn’t sure if he even wants to find himself again.

The only difference is that Ash and Eiji’s love was a beautiful, terrible thing, and Yut Lung’s love is just that - a love that only he feels, a love that only he will be destroyed by.

And he is, now. He’s being destroyed by it, by Sing’s increasingly rare visits, by this chasm of distance and emptiness between them. It stretches, it stretches so far. He’s being destroyed by Eiji Okumura, but he finds he no longer has it in him to hate him, because he thinks he might respect him, just a little bit. Because Eiji Okumura has lost the most beautiful and the most terrible love that the world has ever seen, and he’s still standing, he’s still surviving, and that’s more than Yut Lung can say for himself. 

The third year is anger, regret, and sympathy. The third year is giving up, the third year is falling deeper into habits he hates, but needs, the third year is an ache in his chest and foolish daydreams and nightmares turned reality.

The third year is missing Sing.

 

iv

 

In the fourth year, in which Sing has all but moved in with Eiji, he starts to visit Yut Lung more often, again.

It’s mostly because of Eiji. _I do not want you to be like me_ , he’d said. _I know what it is like to lose someone that means very much to you. Please do not do this._

He’d never told Eiji he was in love with him. He’d known, somehow, and Sing doesn’t ask, because he doesn’t think he wants to know, anyway.

So he goes. He starts to visit more often, because he’d been overwhelmed by the guilt that came with what Eiji had told him - it’s his fault that Ash is dead, Eiji hadn’t chosen this, and now Sing is isolating himself, letting the distance between them grow in the hopes that it would somehow heal his aching heart.

It still hurts, so much.

The visits are almost as painful, because Yut Lung is still drinking, and Sing starts to plead again, but he turns his head and holds up his hand. He doesn’t regret it though, because it makes his heart ache a little less, even though it burns a lot more.

Some days are nice, even. Those days make his heart stretch, battered flesh tightening and pulsing, because it’s so hard and it’s so easy like this, when Yut Lung is almost sober, when he talks to him, when their hands linger for a little too long and their gazes are a little too heavy.

He has to remind himself that it isn’t like it was before, and he pulls his hand away and wrenches his gaze off of him.

The fourth year is pain, guilt, and heartache. The fourth year is broken connections not quite rebuilt, the fourth year is deaths long ago weighing heavy once again, the fourth year is love that’s not as hidden as he once thought, the fourth year is guilt from all sides that’s tearing him apart.

The fourth year is hurt doused in gasoline and fire that roars higher, higher.

 

v

 

In the fifth year, Sing sees Yut Lung with other men.

They’re everywhere, it feels like - they’re leaving his house, there’s a different one every time he comes. He wishes he could pretend that they’re businessmen, but he’s not delusional, and he sure as hell isn’t stupid - the men are all young, built, with tanned skin and sheepish smiles, all in various states of dishevelment, hair mussed, ties untied and lips swollen.

He has no right to be angry, he knows, but it still feels like a slap in the face every time he sees them. Yut Lung doesn’t even try to hide it, he just lets them prance around his mansion with necks covered in bruises and smiles that make Sing want to tear their faces off.

One day, Sing walks in on one of them with Yut Lung in the parlor, a tanned body moving over Yut Lung’s, and Sing feels like he might collapse, he feels like a stake has been driven clean into his heart, because he’d thought, even after all of the ones he’d seen, at least this would be _theirs_. The parlor is theirs, he thinks, it’s _theirs_.

Everything, everything they’d been through, everything they’d done, through wine and Chinese food and first kisses and second kisses and beginnings and heartbreak and endings, everything had been _here_ , and now it’s been - it’s been _defiled_ , tainted by the sweat of a man who would never see Yut Lung again. Tainted by the sins of Lee Yut Lung, tainted by the feeling of such utter betrayal he wonders if he’s ever even felt it at all, before this. Tainted red with ink, tainted red for every spot that Yut Lung has touched another man.

The parlor is covered in red.

The fifth year is betrayal, jealousy, and heartbreak. The fifth year is his heart being ripped apart by nameless men who don't even know that they're doing it, the fifth year is wanting to burn images away, eradicating them from his memory, the fifth year is wondering why he’d trusted at all.

The fifth year is the parlor covered in red, and it’s Sing buried in regret.

 

vi

 

In the sixth year, Yut Lung gets Sing drunk.

He doesn’t really know how it happened, if he’s honest. Sing never gets drunk with him, he hasn’t in years, but one day he’d asked, and Sing had said “Fuck it,” uncorked a bottle of wine, put it to his lips and had taken a long swig.

They get so drunk, and when he’s drunk, his head feels fuzzy, like the static on a television screen, and he’d almost forgotten, but Sing gets handsy when he’s drunk, and his hands feel like branding irons on his skin, there are burn marks on his chest, his arms, his neck, but he can’t push him away, because it feels so familiar, so terrifyingly euphoric that he wishes they could stay like this forever.

Everything is right again, and then they’re kissing again, and it feels so easy, _so_ easy, it feels just like it did before, hard edges and soft touches and everything is so perfect he feels like he could fly.

Then they’re on the chaise, they’re pulling their clothes off, and then it feels _so sweet_ , and it feels so like _love_ that Yut Lung feels tears trickling down his face, but he wipes them away, and Sing never sees. 

When he wakes up in the morning, Sing is gone, and Yut Lung tries to forget, he tries so hard, but Sing is so absolutely unforgettable he doesn’t see how he possibly could. There are burn marks on his neck, burn marks littering his body, and he has Sing’s name branded on his heart.

They never speak about it, and Yut Lung pretends he’s forgotten.

The sixth year is love, remembering, and pretending. The sixth year is things never forgotten remembered three times as vivid, the sixth year is things he can never have held in front of him like a carrot on a stick, pulled away before he can reach for it, the sixth year is pretending and hating every minute of it.

The sixth year is sweetness beyond belief, and the sixth year is everything three times as sour.

 

vii

 

In the seventh year, Sing is important, now. Or so people tell him, at least. He isn’t too sure, but he supposes it must be true, because Yut Lung has told him more than a few times that he has more power than he knows what to do with, and he’s starting to notice that his guards don’t treat him like a silly little child, anymore. They bow to him, now, and he doesn’t know how to react, because he’s not some sort of emperor, he’s just Sing, and people don’t normally bow to him. At least, not literally.

He’s been invited to a ball, and it’s his first time going to one. It’s going to be filled with rich and powerful people that he needs to impress, or so Yut Lung tells him. They’ll have to waltz, Yut Lung also says, and Sing panics, because he doesn’t know how to waltz.

“I’ll teach you,” Yut Lung says, and Sing accepts, gratefully, because he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself at the only ball he’s ever been important enough to be invited to.

He doesn’t realise how much of a mistake it was, saying yes to this, saying yes to being this close to Yut Lung, saying yes to feeling arms around his neck, saying yes to feeling his waist with his arms wrapped around it.

He should have said no, because he thinks he’s overestimated his ability to be able to keep pretending, but it’s too late, and he tries to lose himself in the steady rhythm of their feet, step, step, side, back, back, side, step.

It’s too much though, because dancing with Yut Lung feels so strange, so intimate in a way he hadn’t known before, in a way that makes him so aware of everything, of his eyes that feel like magnets, he’s trying so hard to avoid looking at them, because he doesn’t think he can, but he can’t help himself, and he thinks he’s losing himself in them again.

He feels Yut Lung lean his head on his chest, and he pulls him tighter, because if he can’t have what he really wants, then he should at least be able to have this, these stolen moments of heart-wrenching closeness. 

He dances, dances, they’ve fallen into step, fallen in sync, and they’re still so out of sync he can hardly believe it.

The seventh year is aching, longing, and nostalgia. The seventh year is moments he knows he can never keep, moments he knows he will pay the price for, the seventh year is dancing in the dark and desperate wishes for more, the seventh year is his heart skipping beats and never beating steadily again.

The seventh year is cruel, because it seemed that closeness was attainable, in the seventh year, and Sing knows that it isn’t, now.

 

viii

 

In the eighth year, Yut Lung realises all that he’s lost, and he goes into in-patient rehabilitation at a care center in New York. 

It happens after he hasn’t seen Sing for a month. It’s longer than he’s gone in years, and he feels like frayed ends of a thread, unravelling, unravelling, the alcohol is barely enough for him, anymore. He needs Sing, he needs him so badly it hurts.

When Sing comes back, relief crashes down on him like a tidal wave, he collapses with it, heat in the back of his eyes and stomach churning. 

“Please let me take you somewhere,” Sing says, and Yut Lung knows where Sing wants to take him, but he nods his head miserably anyway, because it feels like he doesn’t even have a choice anymore. 

Everything is clean there. It doesn’t smell like alcohol, or cigarette smoke. It smells like lemons. It smells fresh. It smells like the beginning. 

In the first week, he’s not allowed to drink, and he’s not allowed to smoke.

He’s also not allowed to see Sing, and so the first week is agony. They call it “detoxification”.

The first month, he talks to a therapist every day, and he doesn’t like it at first, not at all, but he thinks that after a while it becomes cathartic, sort of. Talking to someone that isn’t Sing or his bodyguards or businessmen who trade lives for money.

He thinks that maybe he’s a little fucked up.

Sing can come visit now, and he does, often, which makes things easier.

Not easy enough, though, because don’t they all say that old habits die hard?

In the second, third and fourth months, he is allowed to live alone again, slowly, as long as he has someone there and no alcohol is accessible.

The parlor doors are locked, and he hasn’t been there since Sing came back to take him away again. He doesn’t think he could go back in if he wanted to, anyway.

He never drinks, even though in his weaker moments he thinks he would probably sell his soul for a champagne flute or a glass of red wine.

Those are the moments when Sing isn’t there, and he’s lucky that his bodyguards have banished every drop of alcohol in the house, even though in those moments he curses every god that could be out there that they have.

Sing is there for him, a lot, which makes his skin prickle and his chest ache more, but in a different way, in a harsher, more intense way.

When he isn’t there, Yut Lung can barely hold himself together. 

In the fifth month, Yut Lung is discharged from the center, and begins to live a sober life.

It’s only then that he begins to realise he doesn’t really have much a life, without alcohol. Was he even really living one at all, before?

So now, he supposes, all he has left to do is to build another one, from scratch. With Sing watching from the sidelines, building alongside him, except not really.

The eighth year is healing, recovery, and realisations. The eighth year is realising he’s emptier than he’d ever thought, the eighth year is recovering from something that had been destroying his life for so long, the eighth year is healing from wounds he’d opened under influences he hadn’t been able to control. 

The eighth year is needing Sing, and the eighth year is not needing the vice he’d fallen back on for so long, anymore.

 

ix

 

In the ninth year, Sing goes to Japan with Eiji.

He is gone for a long, long time, and wounds that haven’t quite healed over start to rip apart again, because being away from Sing hurts so, so much. 

When he comes back, it’s with a woman, or something not quite one, and Sing says her name is Akira. 

She’s pretty, he supposes, with large brown eyes and short brown hair. She’s Japanese, and she’s Ibe’s niece, Sing says.

They’re in a relationship, Sing says, and Yut Lung’s heart is smashed to pieces, torn down by a wrecking ball so big he hadn’t even seen it coming. It feels like Sing has taken Yut Lung’s heart and thrown it off the Empire State building, endless feet above the ground, splattering all over dull grey pavement and yellow taxis.

He is shattered, because Akira Ibe looks at Sing like he holds the whole world in his hands, and Sing looks at her like he is ready to give it to her. Yut Lung wants to tear his eyes and his heart out and throw them somewhere he can never reach, because he thinks that’s the only way he can keep going like this.

“I’m very happy for you,” he says, and he tries to sound genuine, and although Akira Ibe’s smile doesn’t waver, Sing’s drops a little, like he doesn’t believe him.

Yut Lung can’t blame him, because he isn’t happy, not at all. 

Akira Ibe is ten years younger than Sing, and twelve years younger than the one who wants him the most, and the one who can never have him.

The ninth year is unexpected things, trips far away, and broken hearts. The ninth year is a girl that seems far too young who has somehow managed to capture Sing’s heart, the ninth year is wishing he’d done the same, the ninth year is hearts that have been broken beyond repair, springs too loose and edges too jagged.

The ninth year is paper-thin skin and a porcelain heart, and the ninth year is wishing he’d never known at all.

 

x

 

In the tenth year, Sing proposes to her.

He tells Yut Lung beforehand, and he feels like Sing has stolen his heart and smashed it all over the marble floors of the halls of his mansion, fractured china decorating the glossy white stone in scattered pieces stained with his blood.

He thinks he’s glad he did, though, because Sing does it on his and Akira’s first anniversary, in front of them all, in front of him, in front of his old gang, in front of Eiji Okumura, who stares at Yut Lung with eyes that are unsettlingly knowing, and a mouth curved slightly in sympathy.

He’s glad he’d found out before, because he thinks he might have collapsed in the middle of the restaurant they’d been at. He might have collapsed at the look in her eyes, radiating pure joy and delight, the smile on her face stretching so wide he thought it might break. He might have collapsed at the nervous tremor in Sing’s hands, he might have collapsed at the nerves that were so evident in Sing’s voice, and he might have collapsed at the way that Sing hadn’t looked his way once the entire night.

He did collapse once he’d gotten home, shaking hands reaching for bottles that were no longer there, and mind reaching for a habit he’d long since quit.

He buries himself in blankets instead, chasing sleep but not fast enough, and trying to ignore the fact that the pillow is becoming steadily damper and his face is becoming steadily wetter.

Sing asks him to be his best man. He accepts, with an aching chest and a responsibility more painful than he can handle.

The tenth year is cement, tears, and wishes. The tenth year is shattered china, the tenth year is tears he tries to forget, the tenth year is wishes that will never be granted, the tenth year is slashes in his heart. The tenth year is a dull, throbbing ache in his heart, like a wound that’s long been healed over, but the bullet is still lodged inside because he knows he can never get it out.

The tenth year is ripping it open again and intensifying the pain, the tenth year is destroying himself all on his own, and the tenth year is needing to let Sing go, but not being able to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. listen. i would sell my soul for comments and kudos
> 
> also i Am Sorry


	6. rip open your chest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here we are, once again! all i have to say about this one is that i cried a lot while writing it, and like the previous chapter, it may be best enjoyed with some sad songs and ice cream :(
> 
> i Apologise once more

They’re in Vegas.

They’re all there for Sing’s bachelor party - an odd mix of a few members of Sing’s old gang, Eiji Okumura, a few people he hadn’t met too long ago that were Sing’s friends, apparently, Yut Lung, and Sing.

Yut Lung had organised everything. Booked lavish hotels, a private jet from New York, and more poker chips than they’d known what to do with. Of course, most of them had squandered it all away, with Yut Lung opting to watch from the sidelines, instead, because he thinks perhaps it’s best if he stayed away from it all.

They’d spent a long time in the casino, with its bright yellow lights and dark mahogany wood, the sound of clinking poker chips and spinning wheels and shouts of glee and coins pouring from machines. It creeps on his mind, faint vestiges of panic and a vague sense of being overwhelmed slinking in the background, blurry, sharpening when he tries to focus on it.

Somehow they’ve ended up here, somewhere nearby the casino, in a dimly lit strip club with blue lights and topless women. The music is thrumming, beating, loud, loud, _loud_ , and Yut Lung wonders how they’ve ended up somewhere that’s even worse than the casino. Shouts of, _It’s tradition!_ had somehow brought them here, where fabric is a rarity and Yut Lung has never been more uninterested.

Everyone else, however, seems a little more active, shoving dollar bills in see-through underwear and hollering and whistling. They’ve had a few glasses of beer, and it’s starting to show - foam keeps spilling over their glasses and their shouts keep getting louder, hands keep getting bolder. He hasn’t had anything to drink.

But _god_ , does he want to. He wants a glass of red wine, so desperately, and not whatever disgusting concoction he’s holding in his hand right now - it’s bright green and it tastes like sugar and disease. _It’s a virgin_ , the bartender had said.

He wishes it wasn’t.

He hasn’t looked at Sing at all, tonight. At least, that’s what he thinks, except somehow he’s noticed everything. He’s noticed how Sing hasn’t had a single pint of beer in his hand all night, and how the strippers have danced more than a little too close and he hasn’t done more than glance at them all night, he’s noticed how Sing hasn’t really done more than toss around his poker chips for a bit, and he’s noticed how Sing’s eyes have been on him all night.

He feels like a deer in the headlights, except he’s already been hit, and he’s not sure what else is left.

It’s strange to see Sing in environments like these - he gets to see him around people that aren’t him. He gets to see the way his face lights up when Eiji shouts something above the music, all bright and sparkling, he gets to see the way he laughs when a man with short black hair and sharp cheekbones leans over and whispers something in his ear, all wide grins and laughter like windchimes. He gets to see everything that he hadn’t been with Yut Lung.

He’s splayed out across the side of the booth farthest away from the dancers, running his fingers through his hair so that it looks like he’s doing more than avoiding Sing’s eyes and the uncomfortably visible strippers.

He feels someone slide next to him, the bench dipping and warm presence settling, and he closes his eyes. He feels so tired.

When he opens them again, they’re still there, and it’s Sing, of course it’s Sing.

“Hey,” Yut Lung says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, but he doesn’t bother trying to smile. He thinks he might have given up on that a long time ago.

“Hey,” Sing echoes, and his eyes look like they hold everything, but Sing tries for a smile, anyway.

Yut Lung only feels worse. “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asks.

“Sure,” Sing says, which isn’t an answer. “I hope that’s a virgin,” he says, pointing to Yut Lung’s repulsive green mixture, which has somehow gotten worse since the last time he’d taken a sip.

“Of course it is,” Yut Lung says. “You haven’t had anything to drink.”

It’s just an observation.

“Yeah,” Sing looks away, hand reaching up to rub the nape of his neck. “Don’t want to lower inhibitions or anything, if you know what I mean.”

He isn’t quite sure.

There is silence between them, again, and it feels heavy, weighed down with whispered words never forgotten and ghosts that had never stopped haunting them, weighed down with the sounds of doors shutting and footsteps on plush carpets. He can see the weight of it making Sing’s face sag, drooping eyes and melting cheeks, like a flower, wilting, the weight of petals and pollen suddenly too much.

“Don’t look so sad,” he says, and he reaches across and lifts the corner of his mouth with his thumb. It’s searing, burning, his hand is turning black, but he keeps it there, because it’s been so long, it’s been so long since he’s seen his pale skin pressed against Sing’s olive cheeks, dusted with stubble he hasn’t yet shaved.

It’s been so long, he feels so hot, he doesn’t dare to look at Sing right now, because all he’s looking at is his hand on Sing’s face, and suddenly the music isn’t quite so loud and the lights aren’t quite so dim.

 _This was a mistake_ , he thinks, and his thumb is still there.

He takes it off, and he feels like ice. “I can’t believe you’re getting married tomorrow,” he murmurs, and it’s quiet, mostly just to himself, but Sing hears him anyway.

“Why?” he asks, eyes crinkling.

“It almost feels like you’re still seventeen,” he says, and he wonders if Sing can read in between the lines. It almost seems like he’s still seventeen, when Sing was still his. His to keep, his to touch, his to hold. Except Sing was never really was his, was he?

Sing still has him. He’ll always have him.

“Sometimes I wish I still was,” Sing says, and Sing looks at him now. His eyes are like the mahogany of the wood in the casino, reflecting blue lights and a pale, cracked face.

He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Yut Lung’s lungs are being crushed. He thinks his heart might have been, too, except it’s long gone, torn to shreds on the floor of the restaurant where Sing had dropped to one knee and pulled out a diamond ring.

He looks away. He can’t look in those eyes, anymore. He feels raw, smoothed by sandpaper and covered in stone that’s already crumbling.

“Well, then it’s a shame you can’t be, isn’t it?” he says, and swallows the rest of his neon concoction.

There is syrup in his arteries, and regret pumping through his veins.

When he puts down his glass, Sing is already gone.

→ ←

The day before the wedding, Sing finds flowers on his dining room table.

They’re unusual, he thinks. He has never seen a bouquet of such a strange mix of flowers - there is a stem full of blooming white flowers with slender petals, dainty filaments and dark lines, yellow carnations with a thousand petals and jagged edges, daffodils with white petals and long shadows, a smattering of delicate flowers in periwinkle and lavender.

They are beautiful, tied with a white ribbon and placed in a glass vase. There’s a card inside them.

_To the bride and groom._

_\- LYL_

Sing fills the vase with water, and puts them in the center of the dining room table.

→ ←

They get married on May 16th, in 1999.

They get married in a wide, grassy field just outside of New York City, away from the smell of urine and away from the chatter and wide-eyed gazes of tourists, away from gum stuck to concrete and away from lights so bright they’re burned into your brain, forever, redgreenblue playing on repeat forever, forever, forever.

The sun is bright, blinding, but it isn’t too hot, it feels just warm enough to make his skin prickle, a little, but not warm enough to burn. The grass is so green, it almost looks fake, speckled with dew and bathed in a wide expanse of sunlight.

It is, in other words, picture perfect, and Yut Lung thinks he might just fall apart.

They hold a ceremony underneath a long white canopy where the sun is no longer visible. It’s traditional - had his brothers still been here, he is sure that he would have been expected to have a ceremony similar once he had found a woman that was worthy.

They’re gone, now.

Sing looks beautiful, he thinks. There is silk and prestige dripping from every limb, it hangs perfectly off of him, the folds of the fabric slide and shimmer as he shifts, embroidery hand stitched with glittering gold dust. He is confident, his shoulders are set, his fingers are intertwined with hers.

She looks magnificent. She looks stunning, intricate fabrics draped around her so elegantly, stitching close and tightly woven, her headpiece is spilling with jewels and white gold. Her small hand is closed in his, and they look perfect together.

He looks achingly, torturously happy, eyes so full of chestnuts and stars, and it’s all for her. She looks back at him, it’s like watching someone stare straight at the sun, his beauty is so blinding, so bright, its rays piercing his skin and going straight through his heart. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even squint. Yut Lung doesn’t understand how, he can hardly stand to look at him, he is so bright.

And yet, she looks so unimaginably happy, there is joy radiating from every pore, her eyes are so full that Yut Lung can barely stand to look at them, they are just as blinding as Sing, except they are not at all the same.

They’re speaking Mandarin now, and Akira’s sounds stilted, awkward, not quite pronouncing the words right and stumbling every time she doesn’t.

Yut Lung can’t blame her, Mandarin isn’t her native tongue, but it still grates, a little, that not even this dims the brightness in Sing’s eyes, not even this can shatter the stars in his eyes.

He closes his eyes, he lets the sound of Sing’s voice wash over him, it feels like cool water, it’s low, soothing, and Yut Lung thinks he could drown in it.

It’s a strange irony, he thinks, because his voice is like running water, dripping, dripping, and the words are like fire, and they burn his skin and they burn his lungs. They’re filling up with smoke, he thinks he might choke on it, on the smoke in his lungs, on the wound that’s clogging his arteries.

There is the rustling of fabric, and Yut Lung opens his eyes, they’ve broken apart, and Sing is still the sun.

→ ←

They hold the official ceremony outside, on a large platform made of fading wood and rusted nails, and they both look so happy it doesn’t even matter.

Yut Lung feels like maybe there is barbed wire wrapped around his heart.

Sing stands at the front, and he is no longer wearing the traditional gown, he is now dressed in a suit and tie, his hair is slicked back and it’s glistening in the sunlight, and he still looks beautiful. His hands are shaking, Yut Lung notices, and he hates it, he can feel every tremor in his hands, his legs, he feels it all, and it feels like an earthquake, and Yut Lung realises that maybe it’s his world tilting off its axis.

Akira is wearing a simple white dress, with off-the-shoulder sleeves and cascading sheer fabric from the waistline. It’s simple, but she still looks beautiful. Her eyes are wide and round, they are so light, almost like the caramel of Sing’s eyes, but not quite. Her hair is short and cropped, falling gently across her face, and Yut Lung hates that she is everything he is not.

Eiji Okumura is there, too, he’s the wedding photographer, because of course he is.

There is a soft smile on his face, it has been there for the past two hours, and Yut Lung is beginning to realise that perhaps that smile is all he has. He realises that he has been looking at his smile all this time and that he hasn’t looked in his eyes, not once.

When he does, they are filled with such endless sorrow that Yut Lung feels consumed with emptiness. His eyes are full of longing and hopelessness, they are an animated mural of anguish, it dances with desperation, they are dancing so carefully, yet so recklessly, they are so full of life and death that he wants to tear himself apart.

 _They could have had this,_ he thinks, and Eiji Okumura’s camera clicks, and he stops looking at him.

The officiant is a man that Yut Lung has never seen before, and he talks for a long time, he talks about love and he talks about perseverance, he talks about tenderness and he talks about laughter, and Yut Lung finds that he can’t really listen to what he’s saying, anymore.

“Do you, Akira, take this man to be your wedded husband?”

“I do,” Akira says, her voice soft and bright, and Yut Lung’s skin feels stretched tight, there is something pulling on it, stretching it farther.

“Do you, Sing, take this woman to be your wedded wife?”

“I do,” Sing says, and everything crumbles around him. He’s been broken before, he thinks, but he has never been broken like this, he has never been so thoroughly destroyed that he thinks it might take years just to find all the pieces again, he has never known such utter collapse of an entire world before the words, “I do.”

He has never known an ache as strong as this, Sing is holding the end of the wire and he has pulled it so tight, wrapped around his heart, spikes embedded, blood spurting. It’s dripping down the inside of his ribcage, there’s been so much blood there that it’s stained red, stained burgundy with broken hearts and bitter regret.

Everything, everything is destroyed, and all it had taken was the words “I do.”

Sing has put bandages all over Yut Lung’s body, healing the wounds as they open and run red with blood, bandaging them with tender hands and tender looks and tender words. Because of Sing, Yut Lung is more whole than he would ever have been, and now it feels like everything is unravelling, the wounds are ripping open again, Yut Lung can feel arteries torn open and wounds sliced apart, the bandages are soaked with blood, Yut Lung thinks he’s starting to feel dizzy at the sight of it.

There is a static silence in his ears, sounds are muffled around him, he sees lips moving and grand, sweeping gestures, and he can’t hear any of it, there is only a dull, pulsing ache that surrounds him, cocoons him. It’s soundproof, he supposes, and he wonders if it’s a good thing.

Akira’s lips begin to move, every part of him burns to hear the words that come out of her mouth, but the silence in his ears still reigns, he is struggling, struggling, he wants this, but he doesn’t.

When Sing starts speaking, it feels like resurfacing after his lungs have begun to wither and his chest has succumbed to the numb burning sensation, it feels like gasping for air and part of him wishing he hadn’t come up at all.

“I, Sing, take you, Akira, to be my wife.”

He wonders how long he has been empty.

“To share the good times and hard times side by side. I humbly give you my hand and my heart as a sanctuary of warmth and peace, and pledge my faith and love to you.”

He sounds like glass, clear and ringing, and Yut Lung is choking down broken pieces of it, they’re slicing his throat open, he’s choking on blood, the taste of metal on his tongue and scarlet red on his lips.

“Just as this circle is without end, my love for you is eternal.”

Yut Lung wishes desperately he could look in Sing’s eyes, but he is paralysed, consumed by fear, fear of what he’ll find there, fear that he’ll find joy and love, and nothing of deception and masked feelings and lies, lies, lies.

“Just as it is made of incorruptible substance, my commitment to you will never fail. With this ring, I thee wed.”

He slips the ring on her finger, there is applause, loud and roaring, but he doesn’t hear any of it, doesn’t see the smiles on their faces, happiness for them and happiness from them, Yut Lung doesn’t hear any of it, and he doesn’t see any of it.

He’s closed his eyes and drowned out the noise with the sound of thunder and hurricanes in his mind.

→ ←

He isn’t ready for the crush of the wedding reception, of bodies moving and Sing dancing, step, step, side, back, back, side, step. It feels too much like the seventh year, except not enough, because now Sing is looking at Akira, his arms are wrapped around _her_ waist, not his, he looks so soft, so soft for her, and Yut Lung doesn’t think he can take this for much longer.

So now he stands outside, cool night air seeping into his skin and there are stars all around him, but even they cannot compare to the ones that burn so brightly in Sing’s eyes.

He stands there for a long time, feet sinking into the grass and the faint sounds of music floating from the reception, wishing desperately he had a cigarette, something, anything, and then he looks over, and Eiji Okumura is standing next to him.

His hair is still long, tied back with loose strands of black hair in front of his face. His eyes are heavy and his shoulders are sagging. The weight of grief has never lifted itself.

They stand in silence, and Yut Lung can feel their hopeless longing intertwining, it emanates from both of them. They’re both being suffocated by it, he can feel tendrils of blackened sorrow wrapping around him, it’s Eiji’s, and he’s sure Eiji can feel his.

“Is it difficult for you,” Eiji begins, and has to stop to suck in a breath, sharp, cutting. “Is it difficult for you, to see them together?”

Eiji Okumura is a flood of grief, sorrow, and regret. Yut Lung can’t blame him for asking, because he feels the same, desperate, so desperate to know, to feel that someone knows what it’s like, someone knows what it’s like to stumble under the weight of it, the weight of years of regret and love and loss. He knows what it’s like, but he can’t help but feel like knives are being dragged across his skin.

“I could ask the same to you,” he replies, and he can feel the blood of their wounds mixing together.

There is a pause, a pause filled to the brim with crimson and hurt, and Eiji says, with shaking breaths and a shaking voice, “I am very happy to see someone find happiness.” Eiji’s eyes are so, so big, there is so much anguish inside of them that Yut Lung feels wrecked, because he wonders how eyes that were once so innocent could carry so much regret.

“I am very happy to see someone find happiness, even though I could not,” Eiji says, and there are tears spilling out of his eyes.

Yut Lung puts his hands to his cheeks, and he’s startled to find that they’re wet, too.

“Yes,” Yut Lung says, and then they are silent, and they watch their tears drip onto grass and stand together, surrounded in hopelessness, pain, and hearts branded with the names of those they can never have. They stand together, in darkness and black tendrils, under stars that will never shine bright enough.

→ ←

Sing doesn’t love her.

He realises somewhere in between dropping to one knee and saying the words, “Will you marry me?” and seeing her face behind a white veil, shining with hope and happiness and promise. He realises somewhere in between words he doesn’t mean and flowers on his dining room table, he realises far too late, it’s far, far too late.

He wonders about everything he’s ever wanted, and he wonders why he isn’t happy, now, when he has a beautiful life, a lavish home, and a honeymoon ahead of him, with the woman he is supposed to love. He wonders, he wonders, but he already knows.

Sing has never been in love with her, and he never will be. He can never love her, because the possibility of Sing ever being able to had disappeared the moment he’d met Lee Yut Lung.

The thought that he could have ever loved her was merely a fantasy, a delusion gone too far, and now he’s paying the price, and he wonders when he won’t be able to, anymore, because price is just too damn high.

She is too good for him, he thinks, she deserves someone better, someone who will love her unconditionally, forever, someone who looks at her the same way she looks at Sing. She deserves someone who doesn’t look at Lee Yut Lung like he is everything, she deserves someone whose heart belongs to her, fully, wholly, and not someone whose heart has long since been given away to someone Sing is never allowed to touch again.

He’d put his heart up for auction, to be sold to the highest bidder, but it had been stolen, snatched away by a devil tongued man with porcelain skin and midnight eyes, fingers wrapped around it so tightly Sing thinks he might never be able to pry it away.

His heart is gone, and he has none of it left to offer to Akira, and she is the only one who has given away all of hers, freely, willingly.

When he touches her, he tries to think of her soft curves, her wide brown eyes, and the delicate flush on her cheeks, but all he thinks of is miles of pale skin and lips that fall open for him.

When he wakes in the morning, sweaty and panting, he remembers dreams of distorted memories, of soft kisses under scarlet light and softer hands in total darkness, he dreams of days long forgotten and days he can never forget.

He feels everything when he’s with her, she is fire, flames in the hearth, crackling and popping, he feels so warm when he is with her, like holding a hot mug in the wintertime, wrapping your hands around it and feeling it warm your skin from the outside in. She is energy, she is youth, she is everything, but she is not enough, because he feels everything, but he doesn’t feel love.

She is fire, but there is no fire inside him, not for her. She is love, but he feels no love, only a gentle affection that will never be enough. She is everything, but she is not enough.

Sing is the sun, and the sun and fire walk hand in hand, one a gentle flame and one a bursting star, there is so much heat inside Sing he can’t handle it, so much heat he feels like he might explode with the force of it, so much heat, and none of it is for her.

Yut Lung is the moon, he is cold and he is beautiful, he lights the path with a gentle luminescence for the lost traveller, he glows in the sky with stars that shine, and he is so, so beautiful.

Sing is the sun, and Yut Lung is the moon, and although there is nothing more Sing wants than to be with Yut Lung, the sun can never be with the moon, just as Sing can never be with Lee Yut Lung.

→ ←

Eiji Okumura is quiet, now.

He has always been quiet, in a way, but now he is quieter, and he observes.

There are many things he observes. He likes things that are beautiful, the most. He likes to watch birds on the sea against bright blue skies.

He likes to listen to the sound of laughter, he likes to watch petals of daisies in green fields fluttering in the wind, he likes to watch the grass sway, gently, gently.

He likes to watch the sunrise, a grand spillage of purples and reds and oranges in the sky, they flow from the heavens, and it is the start of the day, and the end of the night.

He likes to watch the sunset, too, the colors of dawn painting the sky once more, and fading, fading to black. The start of the night, the end of the day.

He likes to watch them, the most. Their touches. Their gazes. Their tension, pulled taut. Their eyes. Their love.

He likes to capture things. He likes to remember, sometimes.

Sometimes, he wishes he could forget, but he still has photos full of hair strung with stars and eyes that offer him his soul.

He likes to remember, mostly. So he does.

He has albums and albums of sunrises and birds and sunsets and daisies. He has albums and albums of love, albums and albums of longing.

There are photos of Sing, and there are photos of Yau Si. Sometimes they are together, and sometimes they are apart.

It’s almost startling, he thinks, the difference between the two.

There is a photo of Yau Si the day of the wedding, Sing’s arm casually slung around his shoulders, surrounded by people and smiles and noise and Akira, who is beaming, happiness shining so brightly he’s almost blinded by its brilliance. It’s only dulled by Yau Si’s jagged edges, who wears a slight, small smile on his face, but exudes displeasure. His brow is too heavy, he is stiff.

His arms are crossed, not in anger, but almost like he is trying to hold himself together.

He looks like he is breaking, Sing’s arm around his shoulder is crushing him, and scattering the ashes that are left.

The pictures of Yau Si and Sing together are Eiji’s favorite. They are soft and filled with warmth, like warm blankets on a snowy day, and marshmallows floating in a mug of hot chocolate. In many of them, Sing isn’t looking at Yau Si, and Yau Si doesn’t think anyone is looking at him, and his face goes soft, very soft. It is melting, like a candle, dripping wax all over the cold metal of his skin. His eyes grow very full, Eiji thinks that if he could look inside them he could find anything he wanted. He looks less sharp, he thinks. He looks less like he could slice someone open with the ice that is in his eyes. His arms are always open, like he is letting himself fall apart.

Like he is letting himself fall apart for Sing.

He also looks very, very sad. There is everything in his eyes, he thinks, and there is so much sadness, there is so, so much. Eiji doesn’t like to think about the sadness, because it makes the bandages he had tried to put on his heart tear off again, and he thinks he needs the bandages if he would like to keep pretending.

It is strange though, because he is selfish, so selfish. He is selfish for feeling a little bit comforted. It feels a bit nice, he thinks, to know that someone has put the same bandages on their heart as you have. He has heard someone say once before, “Misery loves company,” and he doesn’t like it, not really, but he thinks that maybe it is a little bit true.

He knows how Yau Si feels, a little bit, and he feels their pain a lot, he feels it mixing together. He feels like there is a rope tying him and Yau Si together. He feels like the rope is made out of regret and deep sorrow. It joins them together, and it feels safe, a little bit. Like an anchor, he thinks.

There is something in Yau Si’s eyes that sometimes makes Eiji feel like he is looking into a mirror, a mirror of great despair.

He has never liked to look in mirrors, but this one makes him feel stranger, stranger than all the rest.

The photos in which Yau Si is looking away and Sing is looking at Yau Si are different, however. Sing’s face does not soften when he looks at Yau Si. Instead, it crumples, like a piece of paper. Like a discarded photograph, in which the subjects had not quite been beautiful enough. It crumples, and his face is twisted with mourning. It is twisted with anguish, it is twisted with hopelessness, it is twisted with melancholy, it is twisted with misery.

Sing looks wretched, when he looks at Yau Si.

It had been a mistake, Eiji knows, for Sing to marry Akira.

Eiji had known that Sing could never love her. Sing has the same look in his eyes that Eiji does, and Eiji knows that when you have that in your eyes, there is no way you can ever make it go away, no matter how hard you try to wash it away.

It had been a mistake, and yet Eiji had never said anything. It isn’t his place to meddle, he knows. He had already done enough when he had told Sing to please see Yau Si again, but he thinks that although he was not able to fix whatever had been broken between them, at least they had been able to see each other.

He thinks that if there hadn’t been so many people who had wanted to hurt Ash, he would still be here.

He would still be here, and Eiji wouldn’t feel so, so alone.

He doesn’t want to hurt Sing, and he doesn’t want to hurt Yau Si, but he is afraid that he might, accidentally. He is afraid he might destroy what they have now, this careful stepping around each other. It is nothing, not enough for them, he knows, but it is more than they could be.

He doesn’t want to take it away from them.

Perhaps it is also true what they say, about how it is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.

Eiji would know, wouldn’t he?

He watches, and it is beautiful, he thinks. It is beautiful, but it is horrible. It is so worn, so damaged. There are burn marks and smoke, there are scratches and wounds that bleed.

It is horrible, and it is beautiful, and he watches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments and kudos are literally gold and i love and appreciate every single one of them


	7. elegant, eloquent and akin to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, it's me again, the deliverer of angst! i hope you enjoy this next chapter, which is a bit more lighthearted but still has depressing undertones (i think i'm incapable of writing fluff i'm. i'm so sorry)!! i added a lil more eiji because i'm enjoying writing from his perspective too much but yes!! this chapter has some kind of cute (maybe?? hopefully??) concepts so,, i hope you'll enjoy ;((
> 
> also i'm legally dead after episode 24 this is my gift to you just. a little less angst than normal?¿ i'm so sorry
> 
> ps. i think it may take a little longer to put out chapter 8 because,,, guys,,, i Am Indeed planning on writing stuff for banana fish fluff week which!! i totally encourage you guys to also participate in!! you can find all the information you need [here](https://bananafishfluffweek.tumblr.com/)!! (but yes,,, Fluff,, i know!! a venture into unknown territory indeed. not sure how well it'll turn out but i hope you'll join me!) but. worry not, i will definitely have chapter 8 out within the next few weeks, but if there is a delay then, well. That Is The Reason

Sing is surrounded by lies.  
  
He’s built them, carefully, pouring cement and placing bricks, he’s built a house of lies, and trapped himself inside.  
  
He’d started, perhaps, when he’d left Yut Lung, because he had never wanted to leave in the first place, but he’d had no choice.  
  
He’d started small. A lie of omission.  
  
He’d never told Yut Lung he was in love with him.  
  
He built more, poured more cement, placed more bricks, when he had pretended not to see the men traipsing around Yut Lung’s house in the fifth year, when he had pretended not to see their kiss-swollen lips and hurriedly buttoned shirts.  
  
He wouldn’t feel the rage boiling, boiling, if he’d never seen them at all, would he?  
  
Sing has never been very good at concealing his emotions.  
  
He’s always liked to pretend, but that doesn’t mean he’s any good at it.  
  
A foundation built of barely concealed emotions and lies long forgotten isn’t one Sing should have built his life on, and yet he’s surrounded himself in crumbling lies and secrets hidden from view.  
  
Sing thinks that sooner or later it just might fall apart, and he’s not quite sure what he’ll do when it does.  
  
Cement had thickened when Sing had gone back to Japan with Eiji. There he’d found Akira, who was taller and had a smile like sunshine and a spirit made of fire. She had put her hand on his arm and looked at him like he was important, not because he had money and power but because he was Sing, and no one had ever done that before.  
  
She had been coy and forthcoming, and she was beautiful and fiery, and Sing had told her he loved her.  
  
He doesn’t, he never did, and his grandest lie yet sits atop a foundation deteriorating faster than he can fix it. He tries, he tries, filling the pieces long crumbled away with barely meant assurances and lies he’s already told, repeated once more.  
  
There have been so many since then, since Japan, since he’d brought her back with him, since he’d proposed and since he’d said, “I do,” that he forgets all the ones he’s told.  
  
It might be easier to remember the ones he hasn’t told, he thinks.  
  
He remembers the look in Eiji’s eyes, in Japan. The look in his eyes when he’d looked at Sing, when he’d looked at Akira, when he’d looked at them together.  
  
Mournful. Empty. He’d looked like he had failed.  
  
He remembers telling her, “You’re my soulmate.”  
  
He remembers her smiling like the sun had come out, he remembers how her eyes had looked like swirling, melted chocolate.  
  
Sing doesn’t believe in soulmates.  
  
He’d sealed himself in with cement and bricks on that day with the sun and the green grass and starched suit and dripping silk. He’d sealed himself in the moment he’d said the words, “I do.” He remembers, he remembers regret and the familiar cold beneath his skin that comes with another one, another lie.  
  
Only this one is different, this is lie is the start of his endless suffocation, his endless claustrophobia, he’s trapped in a brick house he never wanted in the first place, he’s trapped in lies and heat and loneliness and he hates it. He hates how he’s built his entire life with this brick house, built it on lies and secrets and confessions never said aloud, cement and bricks mixed in with love and silence and darkness.  
  
This is the lie that destroys what little hope he had left, the lie that destroys the fragile, desperate hope inside him that one day, one day he’ll wake up and he’ll never have left Yut Lung at all. One day he’ll wake up and he’ll still have the parlor, he’ll still have Chinese food and stolen kisses and burning touches.  
  
It’s gone, it’s all gone, the hope that one day he’ll wake up and the lies won’t be there at all.  
  
His brick house is painted by the lies of Lee Yut Lung, too.  
  
Once, he’d told Sing, “Marriage suits you,” and he hadn’t known why he’d said it, because it isn’t true, he feels no different, except he does. He’s brimming with lies and overwhelming guilt, but isn’t marriage supposed to make you glow with “the power of eternal love”?  
  
He isn’t glowing, not at all. If anything, he’s dimmed, wilted. A light bulb that had burned out after the door shut on the day he left Lee Yut Lung.  
  
And now? Now, he’s trapped.  
  
He’s trapped, left surrounded in everything he regrets and words he can never take back.

  
→ ←

  
It’s been a while.  
  
It’s a been while since he’s seen Sing, and he misses him.  
  
He misses their casual touches that mean nothing, he misses their conversations covered in the grease of noodles and fried rice, he misses the ache in his neck that means he has spent too long looking up at Sing, he misses his smile and his laugh that warms him from the inside, like hands too close to a fire.  
  
He supposes it’s a good thing he comes back, then.  
  
It’s late, almost two in the morning. Call it a coincidence that Yut Lung can’t sleep, tonight.  
  
It’s raining, a warm summer downpour hammering against his walls and windows and all around him, and maybe that’s the reason he couldn’t sleep. He’d like to think so, at least.  
  
Today, there is just knocking. Today, no bodyguards are here to alert him of Sing’s presence. Today, he answers the door, and Sing spills in, arms laden with plastic bags tied tight and water dripping, dripping everywhere.  
  
It’s seeping into his carpet, and his carpet is expensive.  
  
Sing smiles sheepishly, holding the plastic bags out to him. An olive branch, of sorts.  
  
Chinese food.  
  
It’s been years since they’ve done this. Chinese food in the parlor and lazy conversation.  
  
Add it to the list, Yut Lung thinks. It’s a long one, a list of all the things he’d lost.  
  
“What is it, Sing?” Yut Lung asks. “You’re dripping on my carpet.” He sounds annoyed, but he thinks the only reason he does is because he knows that’s how he should sound. He’s supposed to be annoyed, right?  
  
He wonders if the irritation in his tone can mask the sound of tearing in his heart.  
  
“Sorry,” Sing says, smile still in place, eyes widening, apology flooding his irises and making them look like honey. “Akira and I got into a fight and she kicked me out.”  
  
Casual. Offhanded. It seems so light and easy, so effortlessly fixed. There’s an edge of derision to it, mocking. It makes Yut Lung twist, a little.  
  
“A lover’s spat? Already? And here I was thinking you were still high off your month-long honeymoon.” He takes the bags of Chinese food from Sing’s proffered hands, setting them down on the coffee table in the parlor.  
  
“Yeah, I mean. It’s fine. She’ll get over it soon enough. I’ll come back tomorrow and everything will be fine.” It’s not that Sing sounds unsure of his words, Yut Lung supposes. He thinks it’s more how flippant everything is that’s unsettling Yut Lung. He doesn’t have much experience, but isn’t it cause for concern if you’ve been married for a month and you’ve already been kicked out of the house?  
  
And yet it doesn’t seem to be, not at all. At least, not for Sing, and Yut Lung can’t help but find that just a little bit strange, because Sing has always seemed like a man of honor, a man who would hold his marriage in high regard. A man who would make it his priority.  
  
And yet.  
  
“Let me get you some dry clothes,” Yut Lung says, because Sing is still dripping. “You’re spending the night here, I presume?”  
  
“If that’s okay,” Sing is smiling again, a little uncertain. There’s a hint of a question in his voice, because he’s been taught to be sure of himself, but Yut Lung can tell that he isn’t, not quite.  
  
“Of course. You can stay in one of the guest rooms.” Sing needs dry clothes, he remembers, and then says, “Wait here.”  
  
Yut Lung goes away, and he comes back with a pair of black silk pajamas that are loose and flutter around him when he wears them. Sing is twice his size, however, and he wonders if they’ll fit. He also comes back with a towel, and Sing flashes him a grateful smile that makes him feel like Sing is pressing on his heart’s mottled bruises.  
  
Sing leaves to change, and when he comes back, the pajamas only barely fit and the pajama shirt is far too tight, but Sing can wear them - even if the pant legs are a few inches too high.  
  
They eat, and they talk. It’s been so long, so long. It feels so comfortable, the sound of their voices mingling, laughter bubbling between them and warmth simmering. It feels like coming home, just a little bit, but if Sing is what it means to come home, then why did he stay away for so long?  
  
They come to a lull in the conversation, and the silence between them is so full Yut Lung feels like he’s holding his breath. Only, if he was, he surely would have collapsed by now, crumpling into a pile of tangled emotions and crumbling walls of restraint that can’t hold everything in, anymore.  
  
He’s scared, so scared to turn his head and look at Sing, he’s scared that all he’ll find are cold eyes and cheeks made of colder marble, but he burns with a desire so hot he thinks he could melt.  
  
He looks, and he finds nothing of cold eyes and cold cheeks, because all he can see are brown eyes full of constellations and pink-tinged cheeks. They’re looking straight at him and they’re filling his vision, suddenly all he knows are sparkling eyes and rose-colored skin, and it feels like that’s all he’s known for his whole life.  
  
His breath catches in his throat, it’s trapped there, surrounded by tangled vines that wrap so gently around them and _squeeze_ , lilac hydrangeas blooming over words he’s long forgotten.  
  
His eyes are so beautiful Yut Lung has to close his, because it feels so raw, like Sing’s eyes are stripping him bare, tearing his skin off, peeling it back layer by layer. Yut Lung breathes in, his eyes still closed, and then he feels heat.  
  
He feels heat on his face, he feels Sing’s gentle breaths brush against his lips, and then he feels Sing’s lips on his, and he closes his eyes tighter. His lips are soft, they echo the ghost of the ones that have been there for a decade, softly, softly. Yut Lung wants to taste them, there’s nothing more he wants in this moment right now, but he opens his eyes and pushes Sing away.  
  
Sing jerks back. There are a thousand emotions flying across his face, and they’re all flying too fast for Yut Lung to see them, like lightning crackling against his skin.  
  
They fly so fast, until there’s only one thing left on his face, and it’s just one question - _Why?_  
  
“You’re married,” Yut Lung says, because this is important, this is the answer to the question he never asked.  
  
A pause. The sound of rain pounding on his windows. The sound of their breathing. Fabric rustling, skin sliding against it. Wind howling outside. Leaves flying away with it. They fill the silence, but not quite enough.  
  
“I didn’t know you cared,” Sing says, defiance painting his words, leaving them dripping with a challenge Yut Lung isn’t yet ready for.  
  
“I don’t,” he says, which means _I accept_ , and their lips meet again in what Yut Lung had thought would be a clash of teeth and tongue, but is instead something gentle and cautious.  
  
He tastes like chow mein and jasmine rice, he tastes like heat and the fire that burns so brightly in his eyes, he tastes like nostalgia and memories shattered across polished marble floors.  
  
It feels new, and yet somehow familiar. It feels like a thousand instances a thousand years ago, but if he empties himself of everything he can pretend it’s their first time. He can pretend that this is the start of something, and not just a distraction, not just a plaything that Sing will soon get bored of once he’s had his fill.  
  
Please, can’t he pretend, just for now? Can’t he pretend that there is only him, and Sing? Can’t he pretend that this is the start of falling in love, together?  
  
Roses and baby’s breath, scattered across blood stained concrete and the tattered remains of Yut Lung’s heart.  
  
Sing is the start. He is the start of everything.  
  
If there’s one thing Yut Lung has always been good at, it’s lying. He has lied for so long, it thrums inside him, beating in time with his heart. Liar, _bumbum_ , liar, _bumbum_.  
  
He can even lie to himself, now.  
  
Everywhere Sing touches him is smearing black ink across his skin, painting it with his tongue, his lips and mouth are coating him with it. There are handprints dripping with black ink tattooed on the skin around his waist, on the small of his back.  
  
They’re in the bedroom, now, and then there is ink all over his skin, his touches feel so tender, they’re so gentle. Yut Lung feels his chest cracking open because of it, no one has ever made him feel like he is beautiful and delicate and strong and resilient all at the same time, and yet Sing is here, and he is doing just that.  
  
He closes his eyes and empties himself, and now he is loved, this is what it feels like to be touched by someone who loves you, this is what it feels like to have the sun on your skin.  
  
It feels like the stars in Sing’s eyes are all exploding, nebulous, misty eyes and colors beyond compare. His skin hums with songs forever unsung, he’s vibrating with energy that pumps fast fast _fast_ in his veins. His heart is throbbing and pounding so hard it might burst out of his chest, thrashing in his ribcage and banging in his head, everything is searing and burning and he feels so alive, he hasn’t felt like this in a long, long time.  
  
Sing never uses any of the guest rooms, and they fall asleep with their limbs tangled and sweat still cooling on bare, ink-covered skin.

  
→ ←

  
When Yut Lung wakes up, there is only a cold, empty space next to him. The window’s been opened, the air holds a slight chill.  
  
He feels it cooling the wetness on his cheeks, and he turns away, pulling the covers tighter around him.

  
→ ←

  
They don’t speak about it, not for a week.  
  
Then again, they don’t see each other at all that week, and this is probably because Sing is busy falling over himself and drowning in desperate attempts to earn Akira’s forgiveness.  
  
As if she’d ever really leave him. She’d be a fool to give him up, and Yut Lung can see the way she looks at him, the way she all but melts whenever he does so much as smile at her. It’s sickeningly sweet, the expression on her face - she looks like a smitten schoolgirl, and it nauseates him even thinking about it.    
  
So - yes, she’s likely playing the mulish wife who is deserving of respect - whose forgiveness is, unfortunately, hard to earn, but not impossible.  
  
Unfortunately, he says, because it means he hasn’t seen Sing in days, but perhaps also fortunately, because he isn’t quite sure what he’d say, anyway. Or even if Sing wants to see him at all - which, considering the way he’d left that morning, he probably doesn’t.  
  
So when he finally does, Yut Lung suddenly finds that there’s nothing left to say except, “Why did you leave?”  
  
Sing looks taken aback, and he doesn’t reply for a while.  
  
Yut Lung says nothing, letting his words fester between them, toxic, spewing gas. Breathe in, feel it burn in your lungs. Breathe out, feel the burn intensify, feel it rip gashes in the soft flesh of your lungs. Breathe in, everything burns.  
  
Breathe out. “Because I had to.”  
  
It smells like burning flesh.  
  
“You didn’t.”  
  
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Everything is on fire.  
  
“I know. I wish I’d stayed.” His skin is searing, and then Sing kisses him again, and everything is amplified, but it isn’t, Sing’s hands are branding irons but they feel like cool water soothing his burns, the hot and cold burn of ice imprinting itself onto his skin.  
  
The sky is falling, clouds of fire tumbling from the sky, blue turned to scorching red. They make love on the chaise in the parlor next to wide glass windows, and it’s just like last time, sugary sweet and tender touches. Yut Lung thinks he could drown in it, lose himself in this euphoria forever, and never find himself again.  
  
It feels more real, now. It feels like Sing won’t just slip through his fingers, because now he feels like Sing might just stay. Like tomorrow he’ll wake up and their legs will still be tangled together, and when he opens his eyes he just might find brown ones staring back at him.  
  
Sing is no longer water, he’s ice, and ice takes quite a lot longer to slip through your fingers than water.  
  
Their breathing goes deep and even, their hearts beating in sync forever.

  
→ ←

  
They’ve been doing this for two months, now. This being, well, whatever it is they’re doing - fucking, hooking up, or cheating on wives. Wife, singular, he supposes. He’s the only one that’s married, isn’t he?  
  
It’s wrong. He knows it is. He’d vowed to stay faithful forever, pledged his undying loyalty, sworn that his love for her would be eternal. He’d taken them and thrown them off a bridge, into murky waters and never to be seen again. It’s strange, he thinks, because it doesn’t seem like so much of a step when all they’d been were empty words and promises he could never keep.  
  
Eternal love for her is so far out of reach he could weep. How can he be loyal when his heart had never even really belonged to her in the first place? How can she be enough when he once had everything?  
  
Somehow it had felt more wrong saying the words, “I do,” and watching her glistening brown eyes spill with happiness than he does holding onto Yut Lung like a lifeline, touching him like he’s giving him his heart, like he’d already given it to him a long, long time ago.  
  
It feels more wrong to touch Akira than it does to touch Yut Lung, and doesn’t that say quite a bit?  
  
Now, they’re on what Yut Lung calls a “business retreat”, which those who are aware of it assuming that this is a Lee - Soo Ling getaway - in which Sing Soo Ling and his lovely wife Akira had been invited to spend a weekend with Lee Yut Lung in his lakeside mansion, somewhere off the suburbs of New York.  
  
Sing can only assume Yut Lung had invited Akira out of courtesy - the Lees may be cruel, but they are always courteous.  
  
It was also to save face - a getaway solely between two business partners would have looked a little odd, wouldn’t it?  
  
So now they’re here, in the middle of the woods, in a mansion overlooking a glimmering lake. It’s late - far past midnight. Akira had already gone to bed a while ago, tired of their talks of money and politics and important people she’d never heard of.  
  
Yut Lung had disappeared a while ago, and Sing goes off in search of him. He’s bored of staring into the empty fireplace and thinking about how awfully strange it is that he’s on a weekend getaway with his wife and a secret he never intends to share.  
  
He finds him sitting on a dock across the lake, feet hanging over water that’s just a little bit too low, wearing a white shirt that hangs loose on his narrow shoulders. His hair spills over it like a waterfall, cascading and floating softly around him, a halo he’s done nothing to earn.  
  
He’s quite sure the shirt doesn’t belong to him.  
  
When Sing sits down beside him, shoes dipping into the water, just a little, Yut Lung turns to him and says, “You left it in my room a month ago. I never gave it back.”  
  
The shirt doesn’t belong to him. It’s Sing’s, but Sing doesn’t want it back.  
  
He lets himself smile softly at the expression on Yut Lung’s face, playfully defiant, eyes glinting with mirth. He looks so young, the weight of guilt and greed no longer carved into his features, and it makes his breath catch in his throat.  
  
He smiles, and then Yut Lung’s face melts, just a little. It softens, eyes losing their edges and lips parting softly, and he looks so, so beautiful.  
  
Sing wants to look at him forever, memorise the curve of his cheekbones and the line of his jaw, drink in his midnight eyes and moonlit skin, burn lips like rose petals in his mind forever.  
  
But he can’t, and so he rips his gaze away and begins to peel his shirt off his chest. It’s sticky with sweat - the August air is hot, oppressive, and a dip in the cool water is exactly what he needs. He flings off his shoes and his shorts and everything underneath until he’s completely naked, and then he jumps into the lake.  
  
The water is cold, but god, does it feel good, it’s surrounding him, cooling his overheated skin. When he resurfaces, Yut Lung has recoiled, and water is clinging to his skin and marking his shirt, outrage clear on his face.  
  
Sing laughs, loud, and calls, “Come in! It’s cold!”  
  
Sing can barely hear him, but he manages to catch a barely audible grumble of, “And that’s supposed to persuade me?”  
  
Yut Lung starts to take his clothes off anyway, pale skin glowing underneath the moonlight shining above. The sky is filled with stars and the moon is so full, but Sing thinks that even they can’t compare to Yut Lung’s beauty.  
  
Once he has nothing left to take off, he sits on the very edge of the dock, trying to dip his feet in, cautiously. Sing swims closer, watching as he pulls his feet back quickly after touching the water before straining to reach again.  
  
All of a sudden, Sing darts out and grabs both his feet, pulling him in the water with flailing limbs and an inhuman shriek.  
  
Yut Lung thrashes beneath the surface, water splashing everywhere, and resurfaces. He grabs onto Sing’s arms - for stability, you see.  
  
“You bastard!” he spits, fire and moonlight dancing in his eyes.  
  
Sing laughs again, and he feels so, so light.  
  
“Wicked beast! You wretched man!” he says theatrically, swimming away from him exaggeratedly before soon turning back and grabbing onto his shoulders.  
  
They stay there in silence, breathing together and legs moving in tandem, treading the water that surrounds them in waves of blue and bottle green.  
  
After a while, Sing starts to move them closer to the shore, where he can stand, and pushes Yut Lung off of his shoulders. He looks dazzling, truly, he does, his hair floating around him like ink spilled in the water, a beautiful accident, and his eyes are full of moonlight and rippling water. He looks ethereal, like this, and Sing thinks he could stare at him forever, if he could.  
  
Yut Lung looks like he is about to protest, but before he can open his mouth, Sing kisses him. Cool, wet lips slide against each other, and Sing wraps his arms around his waist, and he feels arms wrap around his neck. He kisses him deeper, it feels like they are made for this, made to fit together like this, made for kisses in lakes and made for falling in love.  
  
He kisses him deeper, and he loses himself in the feeling of being in love with Yut Lung, he loses himself in the feeling of moonlit waves and the arms of the one who will hold his heart forever.

  
→ ←

  
On a cool day in October, late at night, Sing stumbles in again, face pale and haggard. He looks distraught, hair sticking up and eyes wild and bloodshot, darting around the room before focusing on Yut Lung.  
  
“Sing. Sing, what’s wrong?” Yut Lung reaches up, cupping his cheeks so he can get a better look at him, and Sing blinks a little, before coming to himself. In an instant, his hands are surrounding Yut Lung’s face and then he’s kissing him hard, it’s something desperate and needy, teeth clacking and tongues twisting. Yut Lung melts against him, submitting and kissing him deeply for a few moments before pushing him away.  
  
“What’s wrong with you?” he snaps, irritated, but he can’t help the edge of worry that filters into his tone.  
  
Sing just looks at him, before saying, “Go away with me,” sincerity coating his words, he says it so earnestly, and Yut Lung wonders, again, just what exactly is going on.  
  
“I - ” he starts, but before he can finish, Sing is grabbing his arm and leading him to his bedroom, wherein Sing immediately begins pulling out clothes from his wardrobe and tossing it all on a pile on the floor.  
  
“Sing - Sing, stop! What are you doing? Stop it!” he tries tugging at Sing’s arms, but he’s so focused he isn’t even fazed. He starts shoving his clothes in a duffel bag he got from god knows where, because it certainly isn’t his. Everything goes in the bag - toiletries, clothes, magazines, hair products he’d forgotten he ever owned.  
  
His protests fall on deaf ears, Sing moving almost mechanically from place to place, shovelling his belongings into a bag, and really, all he’d like is some answers.  
  
After a few minutes full of demands that were never met, Sing goes back downstairs, zipping the duffel bag that looks full to bursting. He swings open the front door, Yut Lung hurrying behind him, calls of, “Sing, wait! Sing, what the fuck are you doing?” floating after him.  
  
Sing tosses the duffel bag into the passenger’s seat of a sleek black car, and gets in on the other side, sitting in the driver’s seat, hands on the steering wheel. Yut Lung walks up to the car, arms folded. “What the fuck are you doing?”  
  
Sing just eyes him, and asks, “Are you coming or not?”  
  
“Do I have a choice?”  
  
“You always have a choice,” Sing says simply, and Yut Lung wants to collapse.  
  
He doesn’t, so he gets in the car.  
  
Sing starts driving.  
  
When they get into the city, Yut Lung asks, “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”  
  
Sing just smiles at him.  
  
They drive in silence for a while, surrounded by lights from street lamps and billboards and neon signs and everywhere, there are lights everywhere. They stream in from clubs and storefronts and flashing advertisements that are burned into his brain, and Yut Lung thinks that sometimes it’s too much, too bright, too in-your-face, all the time.  
  
They’re so bright, and there are sounds of cars honking and the thumping of music, sounds of traffic and sounds of rowdy party-goers singing numbers from musicals they haven’t quite got the lyrics to. Everything is loud, so why is it so, so silent?  
  
“Turn on the radio,” he tells Sing.  
  
Sing turns on the radio. It’s grainy, static, but he can hear soft piano and a man’s voice.  
  
He closes his eyes and tries to make the lights in his mind burn away, but he can hear the lyrics of the song float through the car, they are mournful and they feel like they’re suffocating him.  
  
_It’s the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do / To turn around and walk away / Pretending I don’t love you_  
  
His heart is twisting, it’s being pulled like plucking harp strings. Everything hurts, he can’t keep doing this for much longer.  
  
_I can’t let you see what you mean to me / My hands are tied and my heart’s not free / We’re not meant to be_ _  
_  
His heart is thrashing and banging like a bird in a cage, there’s a pounding in his head and he doesn’t know where it came from. There’s an ache everywhere, everything is aching, his rib cage is bruised and chest hurts so, so much.  
  
_All my love I’ll be sending, and you’ll never know / ‘Cause there can be no happy ending_ _  
_  
Yut Lung turns the radio off.  
  
He doesn’t look at Sing. He can’t, there’s no way, he can’t expose himself to that while he’s struggling to keep himself whole, he can feel pieces of him crumbling away, and it’s all his fault. He had done this, he’s fucked everything up for himself, he’s destroyed his life and now all he has are these moments.  
  
All he has are these moments with Sing, sitting in silence in a car full of sorrow, and they’re not even his, they’re stolen moments that should belong to his wife, the woman he married, the woman he vowed to be faithful to, forever. All he has are moments that he never had the right to hold, to keep, to have in the first place.  
  
Yut Lung closes his eyes tighter, and wonders if the lights will ever fade away.

  
→ ←

  
Sing drives for a long time. So long, in fact, that he wonders if the indents of his hands will be left on his steering wheel forever. So long that he doesn’t even remember when he lost feeling in his legs, and so long that the silence seems loud, oppressive.  
  
They’ve reached the winding country lanes he’d envisioned but not really expected, white picket fences and sprawling countryside, cows and horses and hay bales speckled across it. It’s all very picturesque, he thinks, but it would probably be little easier to enjoy if he didn’t feel like he was running out of oxygen.  
  
They’ve been in this car for a very long time, and he doesn’t know where he’s going.  
  
It’s darker now, the sky painted black and dotted with stars he never sees in the city. The moon is just a sliver of light winking down at them, the promise of moonlight barely there, but it’s a promise more empty than the road ahead of them, just white painted lines and black tar.  
  
Sing drives until his eyes begin to droop and he feels Yut Lung breathing softly beside him, deep, even breaths. He stops beside a field full of flowers, he wants to look at the stars and he wants to feel green grass laced through his fingers.  
  
He turns to Yut Lung, whose head is laid on his chest, long, inky hair tied back but flowing across his shoulders. He makes soft noises when he sleeps, like fluttering, almost, the beating of wings about to take flight.  
  
Sing shakes him awake, gently. He blinks a little, disoriented, shoulders tensing and eyebrows scrunched together, but his eyes focus on Sing’s face, and he relaxes, shoulders drooping and face softening.  
  
“Come look at the stars with me,” he says, because the sky is so very bright, and he thinks that he could share this with someone. Someone who holds his flickering heart might like to look at something brighter, he thinks.  
  
The corners of Yut Lung’s mouth twitch, and it makes Sing’s skin tingle, like his nerve endings are lit up. “If you insist,” he says, and they climb out of the car, doors shutting and sounds of crickets surrounding them, suddenly.  
  
Sing leads them out to the middle of an open field, scattered with purple flowers that look like daisies, but aren’t, and violet bellflowers that pop up every once in a while. He hears Yut Lung suck in a breath, quick and sharp, and he looks at him.  
  
He’s looking up, at the stars. They’re beautiful, twinkling at him from a million miles away, bright and glowing and there are so many he has to catch his breath, a little.  
  
He remembers lacing his fingers through green grass, and he sits down in the middle of the field, crushing flowers that don’t belong to him and grass that reaches his knees. He feels it through his fingers, it’s cold, cool like the night, and the grass is so long but it’s fragile, so it snaps when Sing pulls, even just a little bit.  
  
He feels Yut Lung sit down next to him, and he looks at his hand, threading grass through the gaps of his fingers, and then he watches as Yut Lung’s hand moves gently over to his, so softly. His skin is glowing, like the stars are coming from inside him, instead of the other way around, lighting him from the inside out.  
  
Yut Lung pulls his hand away from the grass and laces his fingers with his instead, squeezing gently. It’s so warm, Sing thinks, and they never touch like this, so innocently, so tenderly. It doesn’t feel like a prelude to something more, it just feels like being touched for the sake of it, the sake of being close to someone and feeling hearts align together. He can feel his pulse in the tips of his fingers, _bumbum, bumbum_ , but it’s nice, sort of. Steady, together. It feels like their hearts are combined, beating to the same rhythm, to the same feelings, to the same hope.  
  
They lie down in the grass together, fingers still intertwined, stargazing, but it’s really just an excuse for Sing to stare at Yut Lung while he marvels at a sky so full it looks like it could burst. He can stare at glowing skin and eyes that are, quite literally, starstruck, he can stare at slightly parted lips and marble skin.  
  
After a while, Yut Lung asks, “Why are we here?”  
  
And that’s the question, isn’t it? “No reason for here, in particular. I just, I wanted to get away.”  
  
Yut Lung turns his head to look at Sing. “With me?” he asks, quietly, and his face looks so open and vulnerable Sing wants to melt, because there’s no one else he’d rather get away with.  
  
“With you,” he says.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Would you have wanted me to leave you behind?” His eyes are drooping more, he’s so tired. What time is it, again?  
  
“No.” Is it his imagination, or does he sound a little drowsy?  
  
Sing doesn’t say anything. He feels himself drifting in and out of sleep, it’s so, so sweet, when was the last time he’d closed his eyes?  
  
“I never want you to leave me behind,” Yut Lung says quietly, but Sing doesn’t really register what he’s saying, the words have barely even been spoken, and then Sing is asleep, the words never remembered already faded to black.

  
→ ←

  
When Sing wakes up, it’s to the sun rising, slowly emerging on the horizon. The clouds are tinged pink with rosy light, the sun is a ball of fire rising up, up.  
  
He’s cold, and his body aches. There’s a crick in his neck and everything hurts, except there’s something warm on his chest, and it feels nice, he thinks, so - oh! Yut Lung is curled against him, his head on his chest, breathing softly, his hands clutching him tightly. He hates himself for it, but he tries to ease himself from his grip, because the air is cold and he’s just slept in the middle of a field, and they should probably get going, anyway.  
  
Slowly, he feels Yut Lung’s arms slipping off of his chest and he rolls over, head in the grass and arms splayed wildly. Sing stands up, brushing grass off his pants and discovering his entire backside is covered in dirt and grass stains, and he groans. He doesn’t know what he’d expected, to be honest. Yut Lung sits up, blinking drowsily, and he looks around, dazed.  
  
“Where are we?” he asks, voice thick and hoarse. “Did we fall asleep here?”  
  
“We must have,” Sing replies. “And you know, I don’t really know where we are. We should probably get going, though. We need to stop at a gas station or something to get some food - I don’t even remember the last time I ate something.”  
  
Sing reaches out a hand for him to grab so he can pull himself up off the ground, and he grabs it, grasping hard as he pulls himself up.  
  
“Where are we even going?” Yut Lung asks as they walk through tall grass and violet flowers, leaving a path to a crater where they’d fallen asleep under millions of stars and a sliver of the moon.  
  
“Away,” Sing says, and he smiles, climbing into the car and wrapping his hands around the steering wheel again.

  
→ ←

  
They get food at a gas station. Yut Lung isn’t happy about it, but they’re far from gourmet restaurants and they’re in no state to dine at one, either. They buy cheap hotdogs and candy bars, a few bottles of soda and a bottle of water, because Yut Lung doesn’t drink soda - it’s cheap and dripping with sugar.  
  
Sing drives them to Coney Island. It’s overcast, today, the storm clouds above promise rain, so there aren’t too many tourists around. Yut Lung likes it like this, he thinks. The sun isn’t out so his skin doesn’t look like paper, and the sky isn’t blue so no one cares all that much.  
  
Sing buys them ice cream, even though it’s the middle of October, and the air holds a little bit of a chill. They eat it on a bench on the boardwalk, Sing taking bites out of his mint chocolate chip and Yut Lung spooning his own chocolate ice cream into his mouth, because cones are messy and cups are easy to get rid of. When he’s finished, he throws his cup away, and turns to Sing, who has long finished his ice cream, and asks, “Why are we here?”  
  
Sing smiles a little, which makes his heart squeeze in his chest. “Haven’t you already asked me this?”  
  
“I know. I meant, why did you want to get away in the first place?” He almost wishes he hadn’t said the words at all, because in an instant, Sing’s smile slides off his face and his face drops, like a stone in water. He wishes he could take them back, if only it meant that Sing’s smile would come back.  
  
He’s quiet, for a bit, and just when Yut Lung is beginning to wonder if he’ll answer at all, he says, “Akira accused me of cheating on her.”  
  
His heart skitters to a stop. This isn’t what he’d been expecting when he’d asked the question, he doesn’t even know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this, not at all. His mind is whirling, his thoughts spinning so quickly he can’t focus on a single one, they’re a vague blur and all he can think to say is, “What did you say?”  
  
“I told her I loved her. And, and I asked her why I would cheat on her if I loved her.” Sing’s voice is shaking, trembling like leaves in the wind.  
  
“She didn’t believe me,” Sing says, and he sounds like he is about to fall apart.  
  
“What was it that she didn’t believe? That you were in love with her, or that you were faithful?” Yut Lung doesn’t even want to know the answer, he’s so afraid that he’ll spill the pieces of his heart that he’s holding. He’s so afraid, because these pieces are all he has left. Irreparable, irreplaceable.  
  
“Both,” Sing says, and he’s on the brink of collapse. “But I wouldn’t have believed me either, if I was her.” He’s shattered, now, his face crumpling like tear-stained tissues, eyes full of sorrow and anguish.  
  
Yut Lung feels like his heart is being torn apart, he hates seeing Sing like this, he hates to see him in pain, it’s making him bleed, he’s crying scarlet tears and it’s all for Sing, everything is for Sing. All his pain and suffering and agony has all been for him, everything he is and everything he will be is for Sing. He is Sing’s, in every way possible, and Sing’s pain is tearing him apart, intensifying everything he’s ever felt.  
  
He wants to heal him. He wants to see Sing light up again, he wants to see him smile, he never wants him to feel pain again.  
  
He slips his hand in Sing’s, so easily, and pulls him off the bench. Their hands still clasped, Yut Lung’s fingers wrapped tightly around Sing’s, he says, “Let’s go to the beach.”  
  
He doesn’t like beaches. The sand gets everywhere and the wind tangles his hair too easily, but still he sits with Sing on a picnic bench by the waves. He sits with him and lets his hair be tangled by the wind, lets himself feel the sand on his sweater, inside and outside. He lets himself sit there and talk with Sing, he lets himself do all of this until the wrinkles on Sing’s face are gone and he’s letting himself smile again, the sound of his laughter drowned in the cries of seagulls and the crashing of waves.  
  
On the drive back home, Yut Lung turns on the radio. He sits there silently for the rest of the drive, surrounded in love songs he is too afraid to silence.

  
→ ←

  
Eiji knows.  
  
Sing hasn’t told him, and neither has Yau Si, for that matter, but he is almost offended at the thought that Sing might think that he has not noticed.  
  
How can he not notice? They have always acted strangely around each other, he thinks, but now they are very strange. They touch each other for a very long time, longer than what is the normal amount of time for two friends to touch each other. They look at each other very strangely, too, because before when Sing’s face had looked like a crumpled photograph when he had looked at Yau Si, now he glows, very brightly. He glows like the dawn, and Eiji knows what it means to glow like that. It means love, and love in return.  
  
He wonders if they have told each other that they had fallen a very long time ago.  
  
Eiji sees that sometimes Sing does not wear his wedding ring. He is very soft around Yau Si when he does this, soft like pink clouds in the morning. He looks at him for a very long time, and he looks so full of love that Eiji has to look away, because if he looks for too long, he can feel his heart begin to hurt again.  
  
But when Sing does not wear his wedding ring, Akira is very sharp. She is sharp like swords, and there is a lot of fire in her eyes. It looks like she is promising to burn. Sing is very cold to Akira when he does not wear his wedding ring, he is cold and sharp like icicles, and his eyes are frozen. They do not change at all when he looks at her, because there is only ice inside them, and the only one who can melt it is Yau Si.  
  
Eiji feels badly for Akira, though, because sometimes, after Sing has turned away and he turns soft like cotton candy for Yau Si, Akira looks very, very sad. She looks like she has lived a thousand lives of sorrow, and Eiji wonders what it must feel like. He wonders what it must feel like to see the one you love staring at someone else and glowing like that, glowing like he has never glowed for her.  
  
He wonders what it must feel like to see Yau Si look at Sing like that, he wonders if she has even noticed that he looks at Sing like the sun has just come out. He looks at Sing like he is his dawn, he looks at Sing like there has never been another dawn so beautiful.  
  
Sing is dawn, and Yau Si is dusk. Sing is the beginning and Yau Si is the end. They are destined to be together and yet destined to be apart, equally beautiful.  
  
They are the start and the end of everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the song lyrics are from "the hardest thing" by 98 degrees!!
> 
> i promise you right now comments literally make my entire day and kudos make me feel warm so!!!! you know what to do!!!!!
> 
> you guys. you guys. hmu on [tumblr](https://grey-x-green.tumblr.com/)!!! seriously do it!!! i'm Shy so i don't start conversations often but if y'all wanna just yell at me or cry over the ending with me then. i welcome you with open arms


	8. give your body to the flame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit guys. i. i guess this one kind of snuck up on you and to be honest?? it snuck up on me too wow. the Last Chapter holy shit. you'd expect the last chapter to have been some sort of penultimate chapter with lots of climax and build up but no. it ends here. i'm sorry omg but!!!! it's a Bit of a long one so i hope that makes up for the lack of warning I'm Sorry

Their breathing is still evening out. Their skin is still slicked with sweat, and Sing thinks that he just isn’t quite ready for the comforting weight of Yut Lung’s silk sheets, because he can still feel heat on his skin and heat emanating from Yut Lung, who lays next to him, legs still tangled and eyes averted.

Sing doesn’t know if he likes this part or not, this strange little in between, a silence filled only by ragged breathing and the weight of words he’s too afraid to speak out loud pressing in on them.

He wonders when the pressure will be too much, he wonders when it will make his eardrums burst and his skin fold in on itself. He’d like to relieve some of it, he thinks, because his eardrums already feel a little stretched, and his skin already feels a little fragile.

Fragile skin to match a fragile heart.

His sweat has barely cooled before the pressure becomes too much, filling his lungs and stretching the worn flesh of his heart.

“Are you still in love with him?” he asks, the question bursting out, unbridled, and he feels something that isn’t quite regret washing over him. Not quite regret, he thinks, because now the pressure on his skin has lessened, just a bit. Only, now the pressure has migrated to his heart, bursting blood vessels and pressing on bruises he’d hoped would have healed, by now.

Yut Lung turns to him, eyes darkening further and face clouding over. “What?”

Oh, god, his heart hurts so much. Sing wishes silk sheets were enough to bandage his bleeding heart. 

It’s too late now, he thinks. “Do you still love him? The one,” he pauses, sucking in a breath, hoping that the air is full of courage and the answer he’s hoping for, “The one you said you were in love with, all those years ago?”

It feels like Sing has never known silence until this moment. Nothing breathes, nothing moves. There aren’t any sheets rustling, there aren’t any sounds of cars on the highway, just dead silence.

Almost like the whole world is holding its breath, waiting for an answer.

“I would give anything to say that I wasn’t, anymore,” he says, an echo of a decade ago, phantom fingers he’d thought were long gone returned once again, returned to haunt mottled flesh and a weary heart.

Sing closes his eyes, squeezing them tightly together, wondering if he can shut the whole world out if he squeezes hard enough. A fruitless attempt, but he hadn’t been expecting much, anyway.

“Who is he?” he asks, because Sing’s heart has already been torn apart, chunks of bloody flesh strewn around him, ravaged by a love he could never quite keep contained. His heart is already a bloody mess on the floor, so what more could a few words do?

“Why does it matter? I’ve waited this long. He doesn’t care about me, anyway.”

Jealousy rages inside of him, something sharp and dangerous clawing at his insides, torn intestines and acid burning, but there’s also something strange and melancholy filling him, a sense of loss that he doesn’t quite understand.

“I - I was just curious. And if he doesn’t care about you, then why have you waited so long for him, anyway?” Bitterness softened by aching regret twists his words, a hint of envy barely discernible.

“I often ask myself the same question.” Yut Lung’s words start to shake, trembling with something that sounds a little like fear. “But I think that, if I were able to let him go, I would have, by now.” His voice thickens, honey in his throat turned too sticky and too sweet. “I’d call myself a fool for holding on for so long, and I am, but he’s too bright, too beautiful, too much of everything for me to ever be able to stop.”

Rose thorns in his heart, soft petals blown away in the wind. How can he ever compete with someone like that? How can he ever be anything but a disappointment, someone who married a woman he never could love, someone who left, over and over again?

“Please,” he begs, heart bleeding, “Tell me who he is. I have to know.”

“Why?” Yut Lung asks, barely a whisper, cracked, held together by snapping strings and broken promises.

“Please.” Desperation seeps into his tone. “Please, just tell me.”

The air is heavy.

Yut Lung turns to him, and when Sing looks into his eyes, they’re full of anger. Fire, and hell. Anger that burns, anger that promises revenge.

“Who do you think, Sing? Who the fuck do you think I’m in love with? Who the fuck do you think I’ve been waiting for?  Who the fuck do you think made me feel like this? Who the fuck do you think it is?” His words are whips, lashing and snapping, leaving white-hot pain and bright red marks, and stinging he barely even registers. He’s sat up, now, hair wild and eyes in flames.

Sing has never felt pain like this, never felt the stinging pain of whips on his back, he’s being crucified, left bleeding and half-dead, and there’s a sinking feeling inside him that makes him thinks that he deserves it.

“I, I don’t know. Please, just tell me. I’ll kill him, I swear. I’ll tear every last limb from his body for ever hurting you like this.” Sing’s eyes are stinging now, burning with unshed tears, and he’s shaking, he’s so angry, and he’s so, so hurt, it aches inside him like nothing ever has.

Yut Lung only laughs, and it’s a cold, cruel sound, a smile twisting his lips and it’s oh, so bitter, almost manic, but his eyes are filled with sorrow and tears. “Goddamn you, Sing Soo-Ling. You always were the stupidest one I’ve ever fallen for. The only one, in fact,” he says, voice cracking and tears trickling down his cheeks.

Sing is crying, now, too, and he doesn’t know what to say, he’s just sitting there, because he doesn’t quite understand what he’s just said.

“Don’t cry,” is all Sing can say, as tears are cascading down his own face, and he tries to wipe Yut Lung’s tears away.

Yut Lung bats his hand away, a choked sob escaping his throat, and he covers his face. “Damn you, Sing. I hate you,” he sobs, tears flowing down his face and dripping onto the bed.

“Oh my god,” Sing says, and then there’s only dread. Dread, and panic, because no, this can’t be real. “Oh god, no.”

Yut Lung only cries harder, wrapping his arms around himself, shaking uncontrollably.

Horror. Numb horror. It’s running through his veins, but slowly. Like it’s thickening. The horror mixes with dread like oil and water, and now it’s in his bloodstream, poisonous and acrid, burning his veins and his flesh.

“No,” Sing says. “No, no, no. This can’t be happening. You’re lying.” There's honey in his throat. “You can’t, you can’t. Why would you say that to me? You’re lying, you can’t - ” Sing dissolves into a mess of tears and blood pouring from wounds reopened, this isn’t happening, this isn’t _real_.

Yut Lung rears back, fire and fury flashing in his eyes. They’re still glistening and his cheeks still run with rivers of tears, but he looks dangerous. “Are you fucking for real right now? You are _unbelievable_. How fucking dare you? How _dare_ you accuse me of lying to you? I haven’t spoken a word of this, not a fucking word to anyone. I hated myself, Sing, and I still fucking do, but I had more self-respect than to tell people I was fucking in love with someone who would _never_ look at me like that.” He’s spitting fire, and he wipes his tears away with the back of his hand.

“No,” Sing says, choking on the smoke in lungs. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Yut Lung laughs again, twice as bitter and three times as cracked. Sing feels cold. “How could I? How could I tell you something like that? How could I sacrifice everything, how could I sacrifice the one person who hadn’t fucking left me for _good._  How could I sacrifice everything we had built by saying, ‘By the way, I’ve loved you since Ash fucking _died_ in that fucking library, now will you please fix me?’ How could I say that, Sing? You didn’t care. Why ruin what I had with words I was bound to regret?” Pain. Pain etched into every corner of his words, a bleeding soul.

“I did care,” Sing says, and that’s all he can say, because something is clawing at his throat, ripping it apart with a knife so blunt that the pain is everywhere.

“Are you fucking serious? Yeah, I really got that fucking impression. I really fucking got that impression when you started fucking me and then _left._  I don’t know why I didn’t expect it. I knew you’d fucking leave in the end. Realised your fuck buddy had baggage, did you? You realised I was fucking broken and you didn’t want to stay to help me clean up the mess. Well, who can fucking blame you? I wouldn’t have stayed, either, if I were you. God, I was a fucking mess. You’re the only reason I got through rehab, did you know that? You’re the only reason I didn’t fucking numb everything I’d ever felt with wine and whiskey and shot after shot after shot.”

Sing had left. He’d left, and Yut Lung is right.

He’d left because there had been too much baggage.

He’d been a coward. And he still is, fucking his lover behind his wife’s back.

The wife without baggage, the one he’d married because she was easy. The one he’d married because she was just so easy to love.

And yet, he couldn’t. And he never will.

He’d left for greener grass, and found that maybe that wasn’t what he’d wanted after all. And now he’s straddling the fence, too afraid to leap over for fear that the greener grass might wilt without him.

A coward. He’s fucked up everything. He’s fucked up the past decade of his life, all because he was too much of a coward to accept everything that went along with loving Yut Lung, all because he was too afraid he wouldn’t be enough to help him.

“I cared about you so much,” Sing says, and Yut Lung breathes deep.

“I don’t think you did, Sing. Why would you do this, if you did? Sing, you _left_ me. You went to Japan, Sing, and you came back with some woman I’d never met. You told me you were in a relationship with her, Sing. Do you know how much that fucking hurt? Did you even know you’d fucking sliced my heart in two?” Yut Lung is shaking with silent sobs, and Sing feels the rose thorns burying deeper, there’s blood trickling down his ribcage and tears trickling down his face.

“I didn’t, I swear I didn’t,” he says, and he holds himself tighter, because he’s falling apart.

“You married her, Sing. You got down on one knee and gave her a diamond ring. You asked me to be your _best man_ , Sing. You made me bleed. On the day of the wedding, I was a river of blood, and you never even noticed, because all you saw was her. You looked like the sun, Sing, and I could never be good enough for you.” The cracks get wider, the blood flows faster. Yut Lung is a shaking, sobbing mess, and Sing is numb, numb with horror, because he’d really done all that. He’d done all of that, and Yut Lung was in love with him. The entire time, and he was in love with him.

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry,” Sing sobs, and Yut Lung just smiles bitterly and shakes his head.

“You pledged your eternal love for her, Sing. I could have bled out on that green fucking grass and you wouldn’t even have noticed. You don’t fucking notice anything, Sing. I hate that about you,” he says, wiping his tears away again. “You didn’t notice that I was in love with you, Sing. I half thought you knew and just never chose to acknowledge it. I didn’t even care. As long as I still had you there, I was fine. That’s what I told myself. But I was wrong. You hurt me so much, Sing. I can’t do this anymore.”

“No, stop, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I care about you so much, I’m so sorry,” Sing chokes, tears dripping onto the mattress. He reaches out to touch him, hold him, anything, but Yut Lung pulls away.

“Don’t, Sing - just. Just stop, please. Please, just get out. I can’t - I can’t do this anymore.”

Sing’s breathing turns ragged and desperate. “No, please - I’m - I’m so sorry. Don’t make me go, please. I need you.” His words are choked, pleading. He’s begging, he knows he is, but he doesn’t care. He’d do anything to keep him.

“Sing, please. Just leave. Please don't look at me like that. You make me hurt so much. Please, Sing. I can’t do this.” He sounds achingly wounded, and that’s the only thing that makes Sing drag tears and heartbreak and bloodstained rose petals out of his bed and into the night, because he loves Lee Yut Lung, and Sing has hurt him beyond imagination.

He can at least do him the courtesy of leaving so he doesn’t hurt anymore.  

→ ←

Sing finds him a few days later in his parlor, staring at the rain pounding outside of his wide glass windows, hair flowing and weariness etched on his face.

When he walks in, Yut Lung turns to him, and his eyes look so very heavy, his expression twisting into something Sing doesn’t quite understand, or maybe doesn’t want to, because it had been hard enough for him to come here in the first place.

Almost as hard as staying away.

“What are you doing here, Sing?” His voice is weighed heavy with exhaustion and hurt, and something cold and dark slithers in Sing’s chest.

“I just - I needed to see you.” He sounds so desperate, and maybe that’s because he is.

“Why can’t you stop hurting me, Sing? Why can’t you just leave me to destroy myself?”

He feels the darkness in his chest curl around his heart.

“Please, Yut Lung, please just let me say something. I’m so sorry,” he says, and sucks in a breath. “You don’t even have to talk, please, just listen, I’m begging you. Just let me say this, and I promise I’ll leave.”

Yut Lung turns away, shaking his head. “Just say what you want to and go. I’m so tired of this, Sing.”

The darkness in his chest slithers into his arteries, they’re clotting his blood, bursting his veins.

Everything hurts.

He walks closer to him, and Yut Lung closes his eyes. Sing tries to pretend that he isn’t falling apart.

Pretending isn’t as fun as it used to be.

“I’m not in love with Akira,” he says, and Yut Lung smiles, unsteady, and shakes his head again. Sing grabs his hands, which is a mistake, because Yut Lung pulls them out of his hands so fast, like he’s been burned, and this time Sing can’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. 

“No, please. Just, just listen to me.” Sing’s breathing has gone uneven, and he feels red on his cheeks. His whole body is trembling, but he doesn’t think Yut Lung knows. He’s vibrating with tension.

“I’m not in love with her. I never have been, and - and I never will be.” He breathes in, feels the darkness slide down his chest and into his stomach, settling there, unwelcome. He feels his eyes stinging, again. “ _God,_ I’m so in love with you. I don’t know how I thought I ever could be.” Sing exhales, and feels his eyes burning.

Yut Lung laughs, something choked and desperate, and Sing watches with a bottomless heart as tears fall down his face. “Damn you, Sing. Why would you say that?”

Sing wipes his eyes. “Oh, god. I fucked up so bad. I ruined everything. I’m so sorry.” He feels the darkness sharpen, now something cold and cruel, slicing his veins open and tearing gashes in his heart. “I, I don’t know. I’m not trying to make excuses, I swear I’m not, I’m just. I need to explain why.”

“Sing - ”

“No, please. I need to say this.” He takes a deep breath. He can feel his veins bursting. “I thought you didn’t care about me.” Yut Lung makes a noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and Sing wishes he hadn’t heard it at all.

“I was always there. I cleaned up your vomit and I took your wine away from you and I stomped out your cigarettes. I kissed you and I fucked you and I gave you my heart and you didn’t - you didn’t even want it. You treated me so coldly. I could only pretend that maybe you loved me back if I closed my eyes and kissed you when you were drunk, and, and even then I couldn’t, because you tasted like wine and it made feel sick.” Sing’s words are thick with tears and bitter regret, and his cheeks are wet and Yut Lung is shaking. There’s blood coating everything inside him.

“You were right. I left because I was a coward. I left because I couldn’t deal with everything that came with loving you. But I also left because I thought you didn’t want me to stay.” Everything hurts. His ribcage is being smashed to pieces and he doesn’t think it can hold his heart anymore.

“I couldn’t stay away, Yut Lung. You tore me apart but I couldn’t stay away from you. God, I tried so hard to help you. From the sidelines. I wasn’t enough for you, I thought. I thought you wanted someone else, and it killed me. I wanted to tear him apart and then myself, because if I couldn’t have you then why should he? I’d loved you for so long, and he was the one who had your heart. God, I was so stupid.”

Yut Lung is sobbing now, body wracked with shudders and Sing is strangely stone-faced, the only hint of emotion on his face being his wet cheeks and bloodshot eyes.

“You know what hurt the most? You didn’t seem to be any different when I left. You were fine. You fucked other men. They were all over your house. I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to rip their flesh apart with my bare hands. I wanted to kill anyone who dared to touch you. I was so gone, Yut Lung. I wanted you to be mine more than anything and I was falling apart because you were the same without me, while I was wondering if I could ever put myself back together.”

Grief hangs heavy in the room.

“And you know what? I never did. And then, I don’t know what happened, but _you_ did. I don’t know why you did it, but finally, _finally_ , after years of me begging, pleading, you went to rehab. I was so proud of you when you finally went fully sober. I was so, so proud.” He feels his tears drip onto the sleeves of his jacket. “But you didn’t act any different. I still felt exactly the same as I had before - useless.”

Yut Lung’s face has crumpled, crumpled into a tear-stained tissue and a bleeding heart.

“And then I went to Japan with Eiji. And I met Akira again. Akira liked me, Yut Lung. She looked at me like she cared about me and then she kissed me and she kissed me like she wanted to, and she was never drunk when she kissed me and, oh god, it felt so nice to be cared about. To be loved. And I convinced myself that even if I didn’t feel it then that I was going to love her, because why wouldn’t I? She’s so, so easy to love. But you know what? I never did. When I proposed to her, I did it because she’d been hinting that she wanted me to and I couldn’t come up with a reason why not. Why did it matter if I couldn’t have the one thing I _really_ wanted? This was the best I was gonna get.”

Bitter. Everything is bitter.

“But how could she be enough? How could I have ever thought she was enough when there was one time, one time in my life when I had even a little part of you?”

“You had all of me,” Yut Lung whispers, and he sounds so broken, shattered glass across a concrete pavement.

Sing breaks down, sobbing and holding himself tight. “Oh, god, I ruined everything. I had all of you. And you had all of me. And still, I was hurting. I was aching for over a decade and I had no idea. I’m so sorry. Oh, god, I’m so sorry. I love you so much, and this is how it all turned out.”

“You hurt me so much,” Yut Lung whispers again, just as broken as before.

Sing cries harder. “I love you so much, and all I’ve done is hurt you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“I hurt you, too. I fucked up, too. God, we both fucked up. We fucked up so bad.” Yut Lung takes a deep breath.

“I'm so sorry," Sing says. "I'm - I should go, we just. I'm sorry I just needed to - I needed to explain. But you, I. I think I need to go." 

Yut Lung smile is watery as reaches out before pulling his hand back. “I just need time, Sing. I think - I think we both do.”

Sing wipes his tears away with the sleeve of his jacket. "I know." 

"Goodbye, Sing." 

“Bye.”

And he leaves.

→ ←

They don’t see each other for three weeks.

Every day, Sing sends Yut Lung a single flower. He understands now, and he thinks Yut Lung does, too.

He sends a different one every day. A violet bellflower on the first day, a scarlet carnation on the second, and a white clover on the third. He sends lavender crocus on the fourth, a magenta mallow on the fifth, a burgundy pansy on the sixth, and a red rose on the seventh.

He does this for twenty days, and they all mean the same things, they all symbolise everything Sing needs to say.

 _I love you,_ they say. _Don’t forget me,_ they whisper. _I’ll wait here forever for you,_ they promise. 

On the twentieth day, Yut Lung sends a single flower to Sing. A rainflower. Sparkling white, like crystals in snow. Sing feels roots tangling around his pulsing heart, and it feels so full.

_I love you back, I must atone for my sins, I will never forget you._

He places it in a crystal vase beside his bed.

That night, when Akira sits down in bed on his opposite side, Sing watches her stare at it.

Everything in the room feels heavy. The silence is heavy, her stare is heavy, the air is heavy, and Sing’s guilt weighs the heaviest.

“That’s from Yau Si, isn’t it?” she asks, her voice soft but sure.

Sing sucks in a breath and looks away. “Yes.”

“I know you’ve been sending him flowers, too.” Sing whips around to look at her. He isn’t surprised, not exactly, because he hasn’t really tried to hide it very well, but he hadn’t thought that she would confront him about it.

Sing says nothing.

“Did you think I was stupid enough not to notice? Or that I was too embarrassed to say anything to you about it?” she snaps, her voice full of hard edges.

Sing looks down, shame-faced.

He hears her sigh across from him. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry,” is all Sing can say.

Akira laughs, but it’s hollow, empty, devoid of humor. “I’m sure you are. But the thing is, I think it’s been over since the beginning.”

Sing takes a deep breath. “I was foolish. You were the one who was young and I was still the one who didn’t know what I wanted. I thought a lot of things. I convinced myself of them, even though most of them weren’t true.”

He looks over, and she’s dressed in a silk rose-colored bathrobe, sitting with her back turned away from him, but he can see her shoulders are hunched and he can see her arms wrapping around herself.

“I think I did that, too. Convinced myself of a lot of things that weren’t true. But none of it was real, Sing. And I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve seen the way you look at each other, Sing. It’s hard. It’s really fucking hard, because even though I shouldn’t, I still love you. And you look at him in a way that makes everything you’ve ever said to me feel so empty. How can I ever compete with that, Sing? You’re supposed to be mine,” she says, and her voice shakes, now. “You’re supposed to be mine, but you’re not, and I don’t think you ever will be.”

“God, I’m so sorry. You deserve so much better than this. Than me. Fuck, I’m so sorry,” Sing says. Guilt is swallowing him whole, consuming him. It’s so dark, and he feels so miserable.

“I know. I think we both do. You never really loved me, did you?” She doesn’t turn around, and her voice still shakes, like she’s afraid to look Sing in the eyes.

“I did. I do. Just, just - ”

“Not in the way you should. Yeah, I figured as much.” Her voice is thick with tears, and Sing feels sick at the thought that _he_ caused this, _he_ made her cry. She hasn’t done anything wrong, she's just collateral damage, pieces of her heart blown apart by someone who wasn’t even aiming for her.

It’s white-hot, now, the guilt searing his skin, and he feels like he’s going to throw up. He’s watching his marriage end, right before his eyes, and he feels like a bystander, a witness to the end of a marriage built on lies and love unrequited, standing from the sidelines as he watches himself face the consequences of his own actions.

“I hope you find something better than this,” Sing says, and he crosses over to her, gathering her trembling body in his arms and holding her tightly, pouring all his guilt and apology into her, pouring his tenderness and sorrow into her. She’s silent, but Sing can feel his chest grow damp as her shaking subsides.

They sit there, for a while, Akira wrapped in Sing’s arms, and she looks up at him, wide brown eyes and wet lashes staring into his heart, and she says, “Just go to him.”

“Are - are you sure? I can stay here, it’s really - ”

She manages a wobbly smile. “Just go, Sing. Get out of here.”

And he does.

→ ←

When Sing comes the next time, it’s the day after he sends the rainflower.

He’d gathered each of the flowers that Sing had sent into a delicate bouquet, wrapping ribbon around it and placing it in a porcelain vase on his dining room table. It’s beautiful, he thinks, a blooming bouquet of hues, pinks and purples, stunning shades of scarlet and the purest of whites.

They haven’t wilted. A green thumb, perhaps one would say, but he prefers to call himself exceptionally skilled - in the matter of plants, at least.

Perhaps he shouldn’t be so hasty to call himself “exceptionally skilled” in matters of the heart.

Nonetheless, he thinks that he must have done something right, because the flowers are beautiful, their meanings even more so. Every one of them speaks a message of love, poetry in the form of flowers, they radiate love and they speak of healing, and Yut Lung thinks that perhaps they could.

Love, and heal.

He’s braiding his hair on the chaise in the parlor, under over under over, when Sing walks in, his chest heaving and face pale.

His fingers stop moving.

“Sing - what? What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

Sing’s eyes flick up to meet his, and they’re filled with something that looks a little bit like war, clashing metal and blood spilling, danger and terror blowing his eyes wide.

“It’s over,” Sing says, voice low and rough.

“I - what? Sing, what are you talking about?” Panic runs through him, his breaths becoming shallower, because he can’t possibly mean - no, he can’t, he can’t possibly mean that when they’ve only just found each other, he can’t -

“Akira and I. Our marriage. It’s over.”

He drops his braid, and loose ends begin to unravel on his chest. Relief floods through him, quickly replaced by a feeling he doesn’t quite understand, it’s heavy and dark, but he feels lighter, like a weight lifted, replaced by something he’s afraid to touch.

He doesn’t quite know what to say, because what exactly is one supposed to say when the man you’re in love with has just told you his marriage is over?

“Oh? And how do you feel?”

Sing sits down next to him with a heavy sigh. “Guilty, mostly. I feel really guilty.”

“Do you regret it?” He’s holding his breath, now, waiting for an answer.

“No. I mean, kind of. I regret that it ever had to come to this point. But I think it was doomed to happen as soon as I put that damn ring on her finger.” He laughs, shaking his head, but it’s dry and humorless.

There’s something churning inside Yut Lung, something like whatever was in Sing’s eyes, something like war and something like love.

He doesn’t know what to say, but it doesn’t matter, anyway, because Sing isn’t finished.

“I feel kind of… awful? I don’t know. I don’t think this is the way people normally feel after their marriages have ended. I just feel, I don’t know. Empty. My whole marriage was a fraud. I fucked Akira up. I dragged her into a mess I didn’t have the balls to clean up myself. And all I did was hurt her. God, I’m such a piece of shit.” Sing’s breaths become shallower, and his face tightens, skin stretching and wrinkling.

Yut Lung knows what it is now, the feeling inside of him, it’s guilt, roaring, raging guilt. It screams inside him, tainting him black. They’ve caused each other so much pain, and now Akira has a part in it, when she should never have been touched by it at all.

“We really fucked up, didn’t we?” Yut Lung offers Sing a shaky smile.

Sing shakes his head. “My whole marriage was a fraud.”

He looks at Yut Lung, then, and there’s something in his eyes that isn’t war, or pain, it’s something that sparkles and something that glimmers, something that shimmers with shattered crystals and Yut Lung doesn’t know much about it, but he thinks that maybe it might be something like hope.

“But I think… I think that means that this is something real.” He smiles a little, then, and Yut Lung feels so, so full.

“I think it is,” he says, and takes Sing’s hands in his.

Sing’s face softens, and he says, “Please, will you just hold me? I just, I need, I need you to hold me. Please.”

Yut Lung says nothing, not a word in protest despite the fact that Sing is twice his size, he just gathers him in his arms and feels his warmth seep into his skin, Sing’s breaths hot on his neck, and they stay like that for a while, listening to the sound of their breathing and savoring the feeling of being close to each other.

After a few minutes, Yut Lung pulls away, a little, and Sing looks up at him, eyes shining and cheeks stained pink. His lips are slightly parted, and Yut Lung closes his eyes, leaning close. His lips meet Sing’s in a chaste kiss, and Sing is still until he gently pushes Yut Lung away.

Yut Lung blinks, disoriented, eyebrows pulled together because - has he done something wrong?

Sing smiles softly. “I don’t think it’s the right time right now. Just, you said you needed time, right? And I think you were right. We both do. Being with you is enough right now. Later, okay? Just not right now.”

Yut Lung melts a little, because Sing is right, of course he is, Sing’s marriage just _ended_ , so what was he thinking? He isn’t in a rush, anyway. He would wait forever, for Sing.

“I know. I’m sorry,” he says, holding Sing tighter.

Sing smiles again, soft and warm, and it makes Yut Lung’s skin tingle and his heart beat a little faster.

They stay like this for a long, long time, wrapped around each other and breaths syncing together. Yut Lung’s eyes grow heavy, and he feels Sing’s breathing go deep and even. He closes his eyes, and he falls asleep like this, lost in the warmth of Sing’s skin and the beating of his heart.

→ ←

It’s different, now, and Eiji can tell.

The shift between them is so minute, and yet so crystal clear he doesn’t know how anyone else could have missed it.

Sing hasn’t told him, but Eiji doesn’t need to be told - he can see it. Sing’s smiles come easier now. He was happier, before, when his wedding band was hidden somewhere out of sight, but it felt stretched, static. Something temporary, that he wishes could last forever.

Like a photograph.

A moment, captured. Forever, it seems, but forever was a long time ago, just a snapshot, a millisecond of a moment.

Sing had looked like he was trying to hold onto forever, but had known it was fleeting. He had looked like he had been trying to hold onto forever, but could feel it slipping through his fingers.

He looks lighter, now, like happiness fills him. The happiness is inside him, now, and he doesn’t have to hold onto it anymore.

Yau Si is the same. His eyes are brighter, though they are pitch black. They shine with something Eiji understands, and wishes he could feel. He touches Sing very softly, very cautiously.

It makes Eiji ache, a little.

Just a little.

It had been very hard, he thinks, in the beginning. Everything had hurt. He had always been bleeding. He had only seen two colors - grey, and red.

In his dreams, he had seen red, he had seen golden hair and eyes the color of jade. He had seen metal, glinting under grey sunlight, and he had seen red, dripping as full green eyes faded to grey.

Eiji had hated sleeping, because his dreams had made him scream, and they had made him bleed.

It had been hard, he thinks, to see Yau Si and Sing apart from each other. It had been hard to watch their love turn poisonous. A part of Eiji thinks he had liked it, a little, and it’s a part of him that he had tried to bury, tried to bury under tear-stained photographs and bury under rivers of blood. He is ashamed, so ashamed, because he could feel Yau Si’s pain, he could feel Sing’s pain.

He could feel all of it, and it had hurt him, it had made him think of starry eyes and a smile that is burned into his brain. It had made the bruises on his heart hurt so very much, it had made his soul burn and it had made his eyes fill with pain and tears.

It had hurt, but he had been selfish, because he had felt so much less alone, then. They had known what it was like, then, they had known what it was like to be hopelessly, miserably in love with someone they couldn’t have, they had known what it was like to hurt as much as he does.

No one can hurt as much as he did.

They look happier now. They look lighter.

They are healing, he sees. Their pain is fading away.

Maybe he can try to do the same.

He will always have memories of gentle touches and warm skin, he will always have memories of hair fluttering in the wind, he will always have memories of birds in blue skies, he will always have memories of dawn, memories of a broken boy that he hadn’t tried hard enough to fix.

But maybe that isn’t all he has. Maybe he has Sing, maybe he has Yau Si, maybe he has love in other places. Maybe he still has all the colors in the sky, maybe he still has photographs of grey buildings and blue skies and neon lights.

Love spills from every corner of the world, and he knows that better than anyone. He captures love in every photograph, he captures tenderness in every forgotten crevice. Maybe he’s experienced the most wonderful kind of love.

Maybe the unforgettable doesn’t have to be forgotten - maybe he just has to remember everything else, too.

After all, dawn was never supposed to be the end, was it?

→ ←

Sing had come every day after that, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening, but never later than nine at night. He always came armed with noodles and a sheepish smile, and they stayed together like that, eating Chinese food and savoring the feeling of being in each other’s company.

It’s nice, Yut Lung thinks. Soaking in Sing’s glow, basking in the feeling of being loved. They haven’t gone farther than casual touches and lingering glances, satisfied with the thrum of contentedness in his veins when they’re close to each other. He's satisfied with the knowledge that they’re healing. They’ll get there.

His bruises are fading. His heart pounds a lot, now, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. His skin heats when he spends too long looking at Sing, but it doesn’t burn, anymore. It feels gentle, a soft warmth, a rosy pink tinge on his skin.

He’s late, today. It’s already eleven thirty at night - Sing never comes this late. So now, he’s standing on his balcony, hands inside his sweater, watching his breath curl against the night sky and remembering a time when it was cigarette smoke.

There’s a knock on the glass door leading out to the balcony, and Sing is standing inside, cheeks flushed and holding a bouquet of flowers.

Yut Lung tries to look exasperated, but he can’t help the feeling of relief that surges through him and the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth.

Sing slides the door open and steps out, walking towards him.

He holds out the flowers. A bouquet of scarlet roses and pale gold primroses.

Eternal love.

“I brought you flowers,” Sing says, and smiles bashfully.

“I can see that,” Yut Lung replies, but he can feel his insides turning to honey.

He takes the flowers, holding them tightly. “You’re late.”

“I’m sorry,” Sing says, leaning onto the railing. He elbows Yut Lung. “But hey, I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“That you are.”

Yut Lung leans against Sing, shivering slightly in his sweater. It’s thick and heavy, but not quite built for withstanding late December weather. He puts his free hand in one of the pockets of Sing’s bulky coat, and Sing pulls him closer. He’s still clutching the bouquet of flowers in his other hand. He’s shivering, still, a little, but he’s warmer now.

Who wouldn’t be warmed by the sun?

“I can’t believe it’s going to be 2000, soon,” Sing says.

“They say it’s the best time to start anew,” Yut Lung says.

“I don’t think we need to,” Sing says, and Yut Lung feels like his insides are melting, heart turning tender and sensitive, lungs stretching and skin softening.

They’re silent for a while longer, and then he hears drunken shouting in the distance, and fireworks explode above their heads. They’re beautiful and bright, reds and golds exploding against the midnight sky, and Yut Lung looks at Sing.

“They said the world was gonna end,” Sing says, eyes shining with sparkling shades of cobalt and violet in the sky.

“I’m glad it didn’t,” Yut Lung replies, and the flowers fall out of his hand, crimson petals and yellow primroses scattering around them, and then he kisses Sing.

It doesn’t feel like the beginning, Yut Lung thinks, even though maybe it should, because it’s the start of a new millennium, it’s the start of a new year, the start of a new day. It’s the start.

But this - it just feels like what he’s been waiting for, this whole time. It feels like the pieces are slotting into place, it feels like they finally fit together. They’ve carved away their jagged edges, they’ve carved them away together, and now it feels like they belong like this, just the two of them, together.

It feels like they’ve healed.

They’re kissing, and it’s the year 2000. The fireworks are loud and bright, but nothing is louder and brighter than the feeling of being kissed by someone you love under a shower of colors in the night sky, nothing is louder and brighter than beginnings that aren’t, really.

Nothing is more perfect than flowers on their balcony and skin heated by the feeling of being in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow. wow. so it's over, huh? i have. so many things i'd like to say but i guess i'm just gonna try to. not word vomit all over my keyboard oh my god so!!!! first of all - in regards to the ending, i'd just like to say that i really really hope it worked for you guys i was just. desperate to give them a happy ending Particularly after episode 24 (the pain is still fresh) and after all i've put them through i just. i just thought this was something they really deserved ;(( 
> 
> also i'm. thank you so, so unbelievably much for all the love and support you guys have given me on this fic i. it really means the world to me and makes my heart really warm ;(( i don't think i would have been able to finish this without all the support i've gotten so - if you left a comment or a kudo at any point i promise you it did not go unnoticed and that i love you all with my whole heart ;((
> 
> a special, lovely thanks to everyone who has continually supported me i genuinely love and appreciate you all so!!!!! much!!!!! and it means the absolute world to me that you did so!!!
> 
> come talk to me on [tumblr](https://grey-x-green.tumblr.com/)!!! i'm not planning on this being the end of the road for these boys ;(( hopefully there will be a lot more to come and!!!!! i hope to see you again!!!


End file.
